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 137: Mapping Tomorrows Terrain with Derek Woodgate
What if the key to understanding tomorrow lies not in boardroom predictions but in the rhythms of a DJ's turntable? Derek Woodgate, with his 30+ years as an experimental futurist, takes us on a fascinating journey through his unique approach to futures thinking that blends underground arts with rigorous analysis.
Derek reveals how his background in music management (working with bands like Swans and Sonic Youth) and his immersion in early digital communities shaped his distinctive methodology. "Think like a DJ," he explains, involves deconstructing concepts completely before rebuilding them into something revolutionary. This process requires skills beyond traditional analysis – demanding intuition, comfort with paradox, and the ability to see connections where others don't.
• Bringing music, art, and cultural experiences into futures work through "think like a DJ" methodology
• Breaking concepts down to their elements and reconstructing them with fresh perspectives
• Finding "colors that are missing" and identifying rhythms between the beats when analyzing trends
• Leveraging intuition and creativity alongside analytical skills for deeper futures insights
• Balancing professional futurism work with real-world immersion in emerging cultural movements
• Developing new educational approaches that break down silos for complex problem-solving
• Working with AI as a collaborative tool while preserving uniquely human foresight abilities
• Understanding "rebel laboratories" and underground innovation that signals future directions
• Living the future rather than just studying it to better anticipate coming challenges
If you'd like to connect with Derek, you can reach him at dwoodgate@futures-lab.com where he welcomes conversations about futures thinking.
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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.
Coming up on today's show.
Speaker 2:Those skills are absolutely necessary, right. There are other parts of this, which are about intuition, which are about creativity, which are about abstractions, about dealing with paradoxes, about creating hybrids from things that literally do not fit together, that are connecting links, right, that are about being able to see things and have really insights, and take insights from an idea, from a concept, from context that other people don't see, and then finding other perspectives for that and turning it on its head and asking questions that are very different. You know what's missing. What are the rhythms in between the beats, right? What are the? You know what colors are missing. You know these types of ways of thinking about stuff, which, to me and I think that's part of being a success in many ways of applying the thing like a DJ.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the Think Forward show. I'm your host, steve Fisher, and today we're here for a great conversation with one of the most experienced and insightful futurists in the field. My guest today has been exploring the frontiers of tomorrow for over three decades, long before futurists in the field. My guest today has been exploring the frontiers of tomorrow for over three decades, long before futurists became a trendy job title on LinkedIn. He brings a rare combination of analytical rigor and creative imagination to futures thinking. He's not just predicting what's coming next, he's helping organizations and communities actively shape the futures that they want to create. His work spans everything from emerging technologies and cultural shifts to business transformation and societal change, all while maintaining the crucial balance between wild possibility and practical insight.
Speaker 1:What I find fascinating about our guest is his ability to see patterns where others see chaos, to spot the weak signals that herald major transformations before they become obvious to everyone else. This conversation will change your assumptions and expand your horizons. Whether you're a seasoned strategist or someone beginning to think seriously about the future, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and expand your horizons. Welcome to Mapping Tomorrow's Terrain with Derek Woodgate. Derek, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, hey Stephen, great to meet you. It's a different environment. I like it.
Speaker 1:I know I was thinking about this. I followed your work for many decades and since I was a young budding futurist and doing the work, we were all doing that work. But I was reflecting on, like you know, connecting with people. You know it just would be by email or phone call. Like you know, you live in another part of the world and just being able to have a video chat and and be able to, you know, communicate like this and collaborate is, uh, to me a blessing these days. Um, you know you. You know those, know those who are futurists. Probably, I'm sure know you already. There are many that might not. I think the best place probably to start is who are you? I know you're a man U fan.
Speaker 2:I am and an Austin, and an Austin, yeah, that's true. Who am I, which I should actually very little do with my bio. And someone said to me recently, can you just explain who you are as a futurist? I said, sorry, is that how you see me? And I was like you know? And I'm like, okay, well, I'll start. So I actually did the presentation. Some of our colleagues would have seen where I went through, how I became a futurist, but literally from the beginning of my life to today and then more like now. But the reality is that who I am. I think it's a sort of important question, right. So who I am professionally and Dr Gerard Woodgate, the president and chief futurist of Futures Lab Inc. Which is a company I founded in 1996. So you know, I've been around.
Speaker 2:I've been teaching as well in the last 15 years at various universities, introducing in many cases, future studies and departments for future studies and building those centers, but also, at the same time, creating a whole range of transdisciplinary courses in what we call futures-based courses. That means that they have an element of futures to them in the sense of about the future, and there are sort of bits of, I suppose, we take from intro to future studies within it. So at least you understand about this concept. It's about you know the whole concept of working with unstructured knowledge and unknown worlds, all that stuff. But actually they're sort of a combination really of advanced pedagogy, future studies and whatever the domain is. So you know, future multimedia and entertainment is what I did in six or seven universities and things like smart cities as a mirror of human organization. I played with that part of it, a mirror of human organization, nice type of organization. I played with that part of it. And then the other side of that is, of course, I'm consulting with a whole variety. I mean it's been over 170 clients by now, over 70, yeah, and if you go to the website I think there's about 70,. You know case studies and nice endorsements and some wonderful people from whom I'm very grateful over the years. But yeah, I mean I've sort of been in most parts of future stuff, right, you know. So I've worked from real hardcore deep futures or deep foresight, you know long-term three-year projects, two-year projects and so on and so forth to literally introducing future studies to children in Africa, you know, in Rwanda and Uganda and so on and so forth at a very basic level brought into their other subject matter. So I did that with UNESCO and I did it with the Norwegian government. I'm working on some projects there and so I've sort of, over the years, covered a very broad spectrum of futures work, as most of them would say. So that's the professional part.
Speaker 2:Now the other part of me, which is far more me, is actually the bit that I think I bring to future studies. So the first aspect of that is I'm an old person, some would say a very old person, but you know I have a very young life so I can't. But I sort of grew up I mean, I was in university in the 60s right, so 64 to 68. I grew up on, you know, beats. I grew up on Fluxus, I grew up on all forms of, you know, innovative arts, certainly a lot of improvisations, improvised jazz.
Speaker 2:I was lucky enough that my father, who was a fabulous guy he's a biochemist, but you know the love of my life in actual fact wasn't my real father. He was my fabulous guy, he's a biochemist, but you know the love of my life, in actual fact he wasn't my real father, he was my real uncle. My father had died and my uncle and aunt actually adopted me, but notwithstanding that, he's my father and he took me to everything. He was brilliant. He's like you know oh, there's a Dadaist exhibition. Let's go to the Dadaist exhibition as a teenager. Let's go to the Darlings exhibition as a teenager, you know.
Speaker 2:So this ability to be, or this opportunity I mean this is a fabulous opportunity to actually come face-to-face with a lot of sort of creative but also, you know, renegade type of influence in my teenage years really led to pretty well who I am together with, which I will admit now that because I've adopted and because I'm, whatever, lots of different reasons, I had abandonment issues and I grew up wanting to be like recognized all the time. Right, that was my thing. It was recognition Telling me I'm be like recognized all the time. Right, that was my thing. It was recognition Telling them great guys, you know.
Speaker 2:So I was in a band from the age of 14 through to 21 and then later I started off in the blues band, the blues chorus, who were actually really good or went on to be famous, and then I was in a soul band after that. But then later in life, in my 30s, I was in a pretty well-known band, camouflage, and that was. I suppose you'd say sort of it was rock, but it had a bit of a hard edge to it, so it was sort of a little bit cross between punk and rock. Yeah, I mean, I used to act in movies and I did all sorts of stuff back then, but I think what was good about that was that I brought these two things together, this sort of a very openness, rebelliousness or what I call rebel wisdom. This sort of very openness, rebelliousness, what I call rebel wisdom, together with being, you know, demanding. Pretty well, I mean, that's sort of who I am Demanding, some sort of recognition for the bits I do. It's a horrible thing to say in my therapy set Okay, it's good you did that because you achieved a lot, but at the same time, really bad behavior. I think that you sort of feel like that's actually probably what I brought to the table.
Speaker 2:So I joined the foreign immediately after my master's 26. And I'd been living in Croatia prior to that and I did my master's in Croatia. That's because I went to Croatia when I was 16 on an exchange. I spent a year at a high school there, so I was in Croatia and they actually posted me back to Croatia. Of course it's during the Tito years and self-management and all the other aspects, and I'd actually done my master's on aspects of that, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:And then I got posted to a few other places. I lived in Bulgaria, all sorts of places For 14 years. I was with the Prometheus. I came out. I joined the VF Corporation, which was at the time the largest clothing fashion group. It's, you know, lee Jeans, wrangler, all the stuff that you know from the US in particular. It was the biggest US company, but you know it's like Eastpac, all those you know, all the 10 sport, every brand that we sort of utilize every day. It was good for me because I took a different. I was based in Belgium and I took a different perspective.
Speaker 2:I ultimately ended up becoming a global strategist actually originally a European strategist and then I became on the team for global strategy, which meant more and more I was working on these long-term investment projects in countries that we've hardly ever heard of, where we can find cheap manufacturing, and one of the things I was working on specifically was political risk, economic risk, because most of the time you're investing for a 15-year cycle. So I sort of got into future studies more through long-term planning. And then I began to read and I know you did as well, you know Future Shock and everything else and I got sort of interested in the principle. And then I read Richard Slaughter's New Thinking for the New Millennium. And I read another book which was fantastic which was actually called New Technologies for the New Millennial. And I read another book which was fantastic it's actually called New Technologies for 2050. 2046, actually, so it was 96.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've read them both. I know both.
Speaker 2:So they actually really inspired me to sort of think about well, how can I you know work within that domain and what can I bring to the table? So at that time, in 1996, I formed two companies. I formed the Futures Lab Inc, which is still my main source of income and interest, and everything else I do today, yeah. And then I founded a company called Fringe. So Fringe Corps was my. You know I like to have these vanity projects, right. So I was being in a band Less than being in a band.
Speaker 2:Being in a band was a real project, but being active was a vanity project, right. I mean, that's just hey, someone's paying me to do it, loved doing it, did it for a few years, made some money out of it, could do my other work at the same time, enjoy. But Bridgecore was my vanity project. I'd always wanted to run a fringe magazine, so a progressive cultural magazine that was really on the edge. Then it was the time of zines and I did a magazine To run a record company, To manage artists and to utilise all that stuff that I'd actually built up over those years Through this networking With these strange, you know, fringe Sort of groups and to make money, Believe it or not, I actually did. You know fringe sort of groups and to make money, Believe it or not, I actually did. And it became really problematic and I wrote for 10 years.
Speaker 2:I know if you're interested in music, you'll know I was manager of the Swans for seven years. I worked with Sonic Youth yeah, yeah, yeah, I worked with Sonic Youth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked with Sonic Youth for about a year and with Sonic Youth side projects with Lee Ronaldo. Actually, I think the last time I worked with him was, you know, 2014,.
Speaker 2:Around that area they're pretty good friends. I did a lot with Jake Maskis, so a lot of the New York crowd. But it took me into this whole world and if you look up Frenchcombe magazine I won't go into too much here, but it was interesting because it was an insight into the future that has really made me the type of futurist that I am today. So I think without that I would have been very much a business futurist in the more traditional sense, but it allowed me to bring together these other aspects of my interests in life progressive culture with the future, certainly a lot around emerging technologies, and I've been part of the well for a long period, I knew quite a lot of what was happening on the early social media platforms.
Speaker 1:Many, I would say, younger future people listening probably don't know what the well is. Maybe you could, because it's it. It was such a seminal part of early internet and early communication exactly that what would? How would you describe the well to somebody?
Speaker 2:well it's I mean, it's principally a social network in the terms that we talk about today.
Speaker 1:Right, with all the mechanisms.
Speaker 2:With all the mechanisms, right, yeah, right, we had obviously message boards, we had a whole lot of different systems that we could use to communicate. We communicated pretty well around the planet actually, but it brought me into time, into contact with a load of people who you know still, my friends and people I associate with today. So, john lipkowski, with you know, with bruce sterling, with you know a whole group of people and later people who joined right I mean obviously who who in fact became really important and became part of those early South by Southwest interactive programs. So a lot of them I met in the late 90s or early 90s, so in 92 onwards, through South by and so on. It's funny you bring that up.
Speaker 2:Dougie Ratchkoff. You know a whole host of them. So that became also a very big part of what I was sort of involved with from those early 90s through to when I actually formed Futures Lab. So what I brought into Futures Lab immediately was this sort of idea that actually these guys are amazing, they are the people that actually brought us social media, they're the people you know actually that brought us PCs, that brought us half the communication systems that we were beginning to have.
Speaker 2:And I realized that there was something in progressive culture and what I mean by that is sort of the underground arts and other forms of culture and the arts that really generate very, very different ways of looking at things that I can leverage because it's familiar to me and I know a lot of those people but, moreover, that I can see that there are the seeds. I wouldn't say they were weak signals in the sense that we talk now about weak signals, but they were very early signals and I don't know if you've read Future Frequencies, but you know of course a lot of that book is about that and interviews and stories, all sorts of things I did with people around sort of late 90s, early 2000s, whether it was into extreme bio-art, like Zaretsky. You know, katz, and these type of people and people working with you know. A lot of people I worked with earlier were the early techno people right.
Speaker 2:Early hip-hop, early techno, bringing those things across which, today, when I consider that and I look at things like IndieTronica and I look at Dark Wave you know Darkwave and Spoken Word and these things coming together, I don't know Afro Surrealism and all these other types of movements and I can see again this new reflection of a lot of those scenes and movements and one sort of analyzes where they came from, what they do, what they mean, what their impact is, what their implications and ramifications for the future are.
Speaker 2:One can find a considerable amount of new knowledge within that, particularly in the aspects of rebel laboratories and working with transdisciplinary sciences, building stuff that some of it we don't really want to know about, but a lot of embryo development and research and stuff like that, some new species. So to me there was this really good connection between who I am, my broad sphere of interest and what I thought I could bring differently to future studies. So rather than just go, you know, on a fairly straight line, into everything I was reading and what I could see was future studies, I became foresight. I sort of took my own sort of approach. I think you know that I used to be called the revolutionary futurist and then, as I started to work more around the world, people said, well, you can't reuse that. So I then sort of had this sort of renegade sort of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people have different connotations of revolution, right, it's like when you hear that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So now you know, I've sort of moved on a bit from that and most people talk about me as an experimental futurist and that's part of the reason for that is because I do a lot. So it's slightly different to Stuart and Jake, for whom I have incredible moral respect. I'm really happy with what they've brought to the table because they're much younger than me and I don't think they build off the stuff that I did, but I've been doing a lot of that. You probably know Plutopia and all but Living the Future Labs and all that stuff early 2000s. But I think that I'm really pleased to see they made something of it and really took it by the stretch, and I think that's really cool.
Speaker 2:I've gone more into a bit more of the improvisational, experimental side of things and I feel like it's one of those areas that are really missing. What I tend to do the last 20 years, I suppose, or whatever, is to try and develop a whole range of techniques not processes, but techniques of how to work within future studies, to think and break down, particularly sort of like real deep down. Take every concept, every context, work on it from multiple, multiple perspectives and come at it anew, imagining the abstract, remixing, the creative imagination, all these types of things that I work with Body data, space, which came out of a pledge, so from a theatre piece back in London in the 90s. So the sources of where this comes from are amazing, I think, and I don't want to go on too much about this, but the answer to your question. You've got a really, really long answer, but no, it's a journey.
Speaker 1:I think the thing is that everyone. You're one of the few people I mean. Would you consider that there's kind of two parts to this is, would you consider your journey through as a future as to get to that? Accidental or intentional? That's the way you found this work and got into it, because it seems like you kind of found a niche or you found an approach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't really. I think it's organic yeah.
Speaker 1:I find so many people come to this accidentally, like they kind of discover it and it's like wow, like very few people come to this accidentally, they kind of discover it and it's like wow, very few. I guess one of the rare exceptions is when they're young. It's like I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a doctor. No, I want to be a futurist. It's more of the mindset of that.
Speaker 2:It's like people find it. I think the mindset was always there.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But I think what future studies did was framed. It was a professional framing of a way of thinking for me and it allowed me to come at it, which is one of the great things about an early and fluid at that time a very fluid profession where one could sort of like feel very free about how you could sort of approach it right. So, yes, it was. You know I'm going to go back on all the. You know the history, you studied the history, so you know all the backgrounds which I came back late.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean to be fair. People like Peter Bischrup you know all the backgrounds which I came out late. I mean to be fair. People like peter bishop, you know, um, uh, particularly because I I contacted him in 97 or something and I said, look, I understand there's this program that used to. You know I've come out, you know long-term planning, but this, this all seems really, really exciting and we had a long discussion on it and, to be fair, we became friends and colleagues for a long, long time after that and you probably know that many of his students that he felt were aligned with my way of thinking became my colleagues and worked for me for many, many, many years, right like Wade and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So I think I mean I'm very grateful to those people, oliver Markley, you know those people that have actually helped me structure all this. The bridging of whatever you want to call it progressive culture, this sort of experimental arts and stuff with future studies, was organic for me because it's just where I'm in my mindset. But these guys were the people that framed it for me, were the people that framed it for me, that have made who I am today in many ways as a profession right. So I can argue after 30 years. Obviously I've contributed, hopefully, a lot to the film and stuff. You know there's always someone right. There's always, you know, a mentor of some description, however, that mentor functions to whom you've got to be really, really grateful and there were many mentors before that. But in the sense of the future sense, these were the people who gave me the confidence and direction and pathways to make it a profession. I think that's the difference.
Speaker 1:When I think about the field and you mentioned, like Peter, people in the UH program which I'm also a graduate of and want to do more work to support that I feel like the term we have a branding challenge, an issue, because it's funny, you mentioned the phrase long-term planning. That is not sexy, like futurist is a really cool word, but it's always befuddled me why more strategy teams, just in general, didn't take this into account because there's a lot of short-termism in the outputs and the outcomes that they have. But what do you think are the? When you talk to people about what you do, do you think what do you think are the biggest misconceptions people have about what a futurist does?
Speaker 2:I think it's an interesting question and I always recall I think it was 1994, 2004, at an AP meeting when we were asked, three of us were on stage and asked to explain what a futurist is. And I was lucky, I was up first and I just spent a long time probably a year or so in working out what I thought futurists did, because I wanted a tagline for my website and I said for me, I'm in the future potential and that was it and that was my tagline. That's good.
Speaker 1:I'm an uncertainty navigator.
Speaker 2:There you go, and that's the business I'm still in. It's still on my website, right? Yeah, all these years later, the next person and I know names here, in fact I can't remember some aspects of it, but you know it came up and they explained were trying to explain what a futurist did, and someone shouted from the audience that was the elevator speech right. And someone shouted from the audience yes, we want an elevator speech, but not an elevator in the Empire State Building.
Speaker 1:The hundred story elevator pitch or the. We'll go with the Andrew Sullivan, the Sullivan in Chicago, the eight story, the first skyscraper, the eight story skyscraper with the guy with the hand and controlled elevator with the, you know, the eight-story skyscraper with the guy with the hand-controlled elevator, exactly, yeah, yeah, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 2:That was funny, right, but to be fair, that was probably my reality a year before that, and so I think the misconceptions are really driven by our inability, as a profession, to tie down what we are as a profession, right.
Speaker 1:So let's unpack, let's unpack.
Speaker 1:That that's really good for people listening because I think people, I bring it people listening because I think people, I bring it many people. And I just went to the spring gathering um, the 50th anniversary for uh, and there was the we'll call it the 80s panel. They call it the 80s panel. These are people that have been teaching for a while there. I would call he called what did andy call him? The elder council of uh futurists. Yeah, but they look, they were very much about. You're not going to be purely doing this type of work. It's going to be kind of stealthy and I did a lot of that for years, brought it into product work, brought it into innovation work, called it something different, because a lot of people sometimes they can't just the framing of it, just the way you position it right, it has to be theirs. Yeah, let's kind of go a little deeper. Yeah, well, we have a challenges. What do you? What do you think they are?
Speaker 2:well, I think, first of all, it depends on where you come. One of the principal challenges and a lot of people disagree. So people said to me, um, in dubai, november, I said, oh, you're a purist. I'm probably the last person that I would think of as a purist in anything. But there you go. But notwithstanding that, in that particular case I was, and one of the reasons was that I was saying that the fact that there are whatever 40,000 people on LinkedIn who call themselves a futurist is not particularly helpful to the profession. I mean, now, a lot of people disagree with right, but then, you know, that's why we get the debates on linkedin with people saying, well, is it a trade or is it a profession? Now, when we sit out with the I'll just take the apf, as in the ws, the APF and we start out and we say, well, we're forming, you know, a new association, the Association of Professional Futurists. Ago that there would be a fairly by now, that there would be a fairly clear understanding of what that profession consists of. That's the sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Going back to the elevator speech, that it would be really simple, because you don't ask, I'm a university professor, right? You don't ask me what I do. You might ask me what topic I teach and where I teach, but you're not going to ask me what I do. Everyone knows what I do. You might ask me what topic I teach and where I teach, but you're not going to ask me what I do.
Speaker 2:Everyone knows what I do. If you're a doctor, I mean, they'll ask you what field of medicine you're in, but not going to question whether you're a doctor or not a doctor. Right, you're a medical doctor, and that pretty well applies to most professions. And what I suppose disappointed in a certain way is that I spend my whole life, actually probably now not saying I'm a futurist, because I'm not really even sure that that contributes in truth to or reflects any more on what I do. Okay, and you know so I sort of a lot of the time I come from a very different angle from sometimes from the science perspective, sometimes more of the you know I have this whole thing about science meets magic, right? That's my concept on future studies in general.
Speaker 1:Are you taking that from the Arthur C Clarke?
Speaker 2:Actually I didn't, but I mean, I could have done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, technology sufficiently in the future looks like magic.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I think that it's become. Maybe it's slightly easier once you're you know, once you're established, okay, it's sort of easy, because people don't really they know who I am. I suppose what I've done and there's so many case studies and other things on the website, they're not really coming to me and saying we need a futurist or something it's more about. We need you, which is a little different, right? I mean, that's a different perspective.
Speaker 2:But for many, many years when that was not the case, when I was building a company, I think I was lucky to be at a time when there was building a company. I think I was lucky to be at a time when there was a much clearer understanding of what a futurist did in terms of what they contributed to the process in corporate in particular and remember that was before there were corporate futures. Very much right, there weren't so many corporate futures. So now, I mean now, if there's corporate futures, I'm a topper, right? Yeah, I mean literally right. And so you know what has happened. I've got much more into educational and ministerial do you think the role is is?
Speaker 1:do you think it's a job or a skill set, or both? Probably both.
Speaker 2:I mean, I always thought well, it's obviously a skill set and you know more and more. I suppose it's difficult when you teach it and when you, you know, when you see, when you're working with students and you understand where the issues are and what sort of the major sort of parts of this, those skills are absolutely necessary, right? So there are skills in future studies, in foresight for all of us, that are very linear, are very MBA in many ways, are very sort of. I don't say anyone can do them, that's not true. And then there are other parts of this which are about intuition, which are about creativity, which are about abstractism, about dealing with paradoxes, about creating hybrids from things that literally do not fit together, that are connecting things right. That are about being able to see things and have really insights, and take insights from an idea, from a concept, from context that other people don't see, and then finding other perspectives for that and turning it on its head and asking questions that are very different. You know what are the? What's missing? What are the rhythms in between the beats, right? What are the? You know what colors are the rhythms in between the beats, right? What are the? You know what? What colors are missing.
Speaker 2:You know these types of ways of thinking about stuff which to me and I think that's part of the being success in many ways of applying the thing like a dj, because think like a dj is to take a concept or content and fully deconstruct it, so you break it down to all the elements within it and then you have this whole process of how you begin to reconstruct, build it up into something new and so that every concept and every context you begin to really really stretch it to such a degree that you're seeing, you know this whole sort of embodiment of the idea and I think that that allows us to think differently. So those skills are quite tough, right? You see it, when you're working with people, you start to see abstractism, very difficult people thinking in the abstract. You know this whole thing of imagining the abstract. When you ask people what colour is missing, they go what are you talking about? And my friend so my friend, david Coulter, who used to be with the Poets and has played, is a composer now but played with just about everybody over the years. He actually taught me that because he said when I finish a composition, the first question I ask myself is which colour's missing, and I'm sort of you know, I was chatting to him about it, and so one learns, right, from all these odd people around, and I think that one of the points about it is is that a skill set?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a skill set because it demands types of critical thinking, types of, should we say, of thinking techniques that a lot of architects and this is very true of the golf they don't necessarily learn throughout the whole of their schooling, and so you know, you're trying to get them to. I mean, remember, they couldn't have art, let's say, in mentality they don't have art or didn't have art on the walls. Right, my art's rebellious, right. So I have a lot of stuff because I worked a lot in music people. So I have people who, you know, luckily have some really great stuff that I got pretty cheaply from artists who did record covers and stuff like that, but they're really way out, right, I mean, you know, and so some people look at that and they go what was that all? And, to be fair, in the 70s, 60s and 70s, that's how it was in the Royal Academy, right, david Hockney wasn't accepted initially.
Speaker 2:So it's not, it's just a time issue. And what I'm trying to say to you is those skills are my skill set. I don't know if they're relevant to other people, but I do see them as a skill set and therefore, yes, I think there are a lot of skills to real future studies and there are a lot of skills from because I come from the academic part as well, from the theoretical perspective, and I normally go into post-modernism. You know, I was doing this thing last week on the future of security media and no one in the group knew who McLuhan was now like or any of the post-modernists, so they'd never read. I mean, not surprisingly that they've not read Deleuze and we're post-postmodernists now. So not really relevant. But at the same time, if you've studied media, most of the time one would be familiar with that. So it makes it difficult some of the times to understand the broader sense of what we bring to the table as futurists.
Speaker 2:It's not just the skills, it's not future studies per se, that's one bit that you expect to go through a process, you expect to use a framework. Yeah, of course everyone wants to see how you got there, but quite honestly, that's not what I think I necessarily bring to future studies. I think my unconscious and my subconscious is what I bring to future studies. It's the experience of a lifetime that I can see things and I can go. Oh my God, that's crazy. What if I do that?
Speaker 2:It's the names of songs. You like music. The names of songs, they're crazy, right, I mean, they're crazy. And the names of bands, they're wild. And you think, well, how did they put those together? I write poetry as well, right. And I just spoke on wood. How do you pull that stuff together? That's amazing, right. And so there are these elements that are different depending on what you do. Now, how do you bring that into, shall we say, governance or government thought? Now, most of my clients currently are in that area, but I still do it. I still make them think that way, even though it's completely alien to the way that they actually think.
Speaker 1:Well, what makes you know? We talked a lot about the individual, and then the skill set. Like what, since you've worked with so many over the years? Like what makes an organization better at integrating this than others? What are factors? I have obviously my own opinions, and I think anybody who's done this work would, but what would be your?
Speaker 2:Well, I think there are a few things here. I mean one is and I have that issue all the time I tend to work in the third horizon most of it, you know, but because of backcasting rolling back the future, as we call it we obviously get. We have these two extra stages to our process of seven and eight, if you want to call it that where we actually do the beginnings of implementation. We actually develop early stage projects and do the implementation part of the project, and the reason for that is I'm trying very hard to get my clients A to actually start doing the work, moving along the pathway towards whatever their preferred future is. And, secondly, it gives me extra funding. And, thirdly, it gives me an opportunity to keep asking how's it going? Have you actually made progress with that? What's going on? Can I help more? Can I do this? So I think that there's this sort of part of that where where what's going on if we're not careful, is we're getting pushed back towards innovation, right? Everyone wants a quick fix you mentioned. So I think that's one of the issues, because if you go in and you say, well, you know most of my work's in the third horizon, I'm going to give you a 2040 or 2050 vision, I mean, then you've got to be. You have to explain.
Speaker 2:Now, when you've got a lot of experience in this, you have a lot of clients you've obviously created over the years.
Speaker 2:Quite a few things have actually hit the market, whatever that you can talk about, like finally took it, and so, yeah, it's a little different because you have some examples of how you got there and what you did, but I still think there's too much to do with all clients where they're looking for equipment. Two, I think one of the issues is that most of the time, because we've not established a profession of being a really unique skill set and a really unique whatever an approach that lots of people think they can do it themselves, well, we do that. We do that. We've always done that. What do you mean? We've been doing that for years. What are you talking about? What's the difference? So then you're actually in this process of having to, let's say, if you didn't have a lot to show, it would be difficult to explain the difference. And I think the third area I would say is that, because there are so many futures, we've really cut off the pricing, the fees that people are prepared to pay for future studies has dropped massively.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's going to continue. One of the things I want to talk about is AI, because I've been seeing a lot in that, the impact of that in the field. But projects themselves like how do you help companies or even individual leaders, how do them, to measure the impact of success of it? Right, it's like you think about work and other in other parts of the fields that are in an organization. There's usually like distinct outcomes of what is successful, right A delivering the product on time, launching revenue, or marketing campaigns that have certain response Right, there's things that measure how have you helped clients? Or what's your opinion of the impact, how to measure the impact of the success of this type of work.
Speaker 2:Well, moving on from the what we call the APF, which is different things, there's something I do do, because I don't do it with clients. That's something for us. With the client, there are two things. So the first thing is has the client? Have you convinced the client, the bosses or whoever it happens to be, to start the process? And that's why I added stage of process.
Speaker 1:Just to do the work, just to do the future.
Speaker 2:Just to do the future, yeah, just to be on that pathway towards that future. There's a pathway. I mean, we roll it back, we do back-counseling, but there's a pathway towards that, and so that pathway does have a start point and we would say the start projects to get you on that process, projects to get you on that process right. I mean, one of the ways of looking at it in the short term is did they ever start? Right and so and so, having added extra stages I'm using the word stages because it fits in well with what we all understand for houston to the stage of course I. It allows us to be engaged longer at a different level with the client, right? So now you're looking at resource management, performance management system. You're looking at that business-y type of part of all that, right, which is nothing to do with what I was talking about earlier, about the progressive culture or something idea, right? This is real work. This is understanding. You know, what talents do you have? Are your competency matching what's been successful in the last few years? What skill sets have you used that have actually you could take now? What other projects do you have in the line that could perhaps attach to this that could make it easier. How can we bring together the various technologies? What's happening in your technology development size? We can actually latch on to some of those and change the dynamics even of the scenario from the very beginning of how we're going to move forward, because we know the end game. Unless it really is, product development is not going to be the end game that we envisage right Now.
Speaker 2:It was easier when I was working with corporate clients for many, many years because I could now see that a lot of work we did actually became a reality. So I have proof points. Right, it's really nice to take to a client and they can see that. They know that we did things right. But the first few years you don't have that. If you're working 10 to 15 years out, you have none of those proof points. So you have to find other ways of demonstrating what you brought to the table. For example, I was working with Nisei years back in 1998 or so. Pardon, I don't know if you know what you're talking about. You like cars. I was working with Nissan years back in 1998 or so. Part of I don't see much. You like cars, automobile manufacturing, changing the mainframes incredibly expensive, difficult and a long time right. So you know that wasn't an option, but they wanted to expand the idea of space within Well, real space and the idea of space within the vehicle.
Speaker 2:I saw I had a frontline panel of experts, diverse experts, and the people I brought to the table came from NASA. They were spaceship designers, they were people from Bilkinson's who worked with glass developments. They were people that could talk to me about the relationship, the psychological relationship, between the inside world and the outside world and how spatial narratives get developed and so on. So what happened was I was able I mean, the space guy I've worked with a lot, you know explained to me that spaceships don't change. So you have to look at how the technology there's loads and loads, more technology, more expectations. How do modular systems work? How do you, you know, redimensionalize all this type of stuff? And the same with you know, if you, if you actually expand the amount of glass looking to the outside without it being dangerous, right from a, you know, if you're in a crash or something, that of course you have a feeling you have much more of a relationship with the outside world. To talk about that when you don't have a problem or when you don't have a full outcome is the only way that you can actually begin to convince that the way you think about things is really different and that when you start to think about a windshield and you say, yeah well, I had all these conversations with Ford's windshield manufacturers built-in sons, and they talked for hours about laminations and God knows what else, and then I realized that surely it's a vision aid.
Speaker 2:Why can't it be a vision aid? Why can't I make it a vision aid? What can I add to this that makes it a better vision aid? Can it take off yellowing at night? So what I came up with, I mean it's funny. Actually you should ask this question because it's a really difficult question to ask. But I worked with Nokia and they were doing these watches and they were looking at how to build watches that would be for mountaineers, that they could actually be able to see around the mountain to see what was actually going on. But what I understood was, I said, well, should it be a watch? I said, look, one of the greatest things that you have is the left wrist. Is real estate, right?
Speaker 1:That's true, it's familiar real estate.
Speaker 2:Forget about everything. I mean fine, but this was long before implants and other types of you know.
Speaker 2:this was back in the yeah, but you're using the familiar to extend to the possible or the amount you know to imagine right, yeah, so part of I think the answer, the true answer, is that you've got to demonstrate that you've got to demonstrate Because we can't demonstrate. You know a lot of the actual work we've done, because if I'm working on future weaponry for the Ministry of Interior, obviously it's not something I can talk about right, but I have to demonstrate my thinking. I have to demonstrate how I can actually connect, disconnect, how I can see something in weak signals that we don't normally see, and so that becomes my pitch. Right, that becomes my pitch as to proof points.
Speaker 1:Where things are now and how the field itself I mean, of course, this discussion with future studies and people understanding the. It started, you know, roughly 70 years ago with you know work at Rand and how it's evolved over the years. But now we're at an interesting point. I think the next phase is, you know, in in in my book, super Shifts, I talk about a futures operating system. It's kind of like how do you make it active and usable? Right, you can like do a project, right, you can have something as an end state scenarios, write a report, right, so forth.
Speaker 1:But then there's an ongoing nature to the signals, work, the evolution, you know the new types of insights. Ai can be, I think, a blessing but a curse, because it allows you to synthesize a lot more information and allows you to, maybe even as a collaboration partner, find insights. But what do you think that the future of the field and even the profession? Do you think it will democratize the access for people because they can ask it things and they can do other types of work? What is your take on where the field itself is evolving and you can AI support? But where do you think things are headed these next? So let's be futurists, for the futurists it's actually funny.
Speaker 2:That was the title of the 2003, I think APF meeting and I think it's actually really fun. The future of futurists, the future of futurists the future of futurists, and I still think it's funny. That's a topic we're still discussing.
Speaker 1:Well, they just had at the gathering, they actually just had a Adam Coward. Dr Adam Coward did like a session. I think they're going to update the paper, like what is in the field for the 2020. So, yeah, yes, you're, you're you, and they weren't there. It's like you know that's um, it's being discussed.
Speaker 2:But yes, I'm a part of that original conversation, so I know and I had to apologize, which is why I brought it up. Yeah, I had to apologize profusely, by the way, about not being at 50th anniversary, but I'm in the middle of a project and it's quite all right yeah. But I think that okay. No, it's just one of many, many tools and many new ways of doing things that, um, you know, I don't do think think like a DJ the way I did with cards back in 2004.
Speaker 1:Right, Well, I love the way you describe it as what a dj does? Many people think it's like mixing that you. There's a deconstruction, oh totally yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, and I worked with dj spooky right in 2010. I've worked with him since actually the 90s, but I was actually on a panel with him at south by southwest in 2010 and we were rapping about stuff and after that I said, because I put him into a couple of shows which is my French core part, utilizing for Plutopia and stuff like that and also the Future of Music Festival that we did in Houston it was sort of funny, really, because I was asking I said, right, okay, this is what I think you do, but tell me what you really do, right? So we got into all this stuff around. You know well, let's see how many colors there is, and that was really interesting. So it allowed me to really do a different job. But it also allowed me to use technology including sort of references back to technology, to DJ shoes to actually build the system, which is an AI-based system that I now use today. Right, which I discussed I think there's a lot of information on it in Exploring the Future of Universities using experimental came out three years ago, I think, in Futures. So I think that there are many, many technologies. I think we've got to sort of step back from this and really think about you know, what are we doing with visualization? I mean, I've got to say another fact what are we doing, particularly as we are certainly with simulation immersive and deep, immersive 3D or even 4D, where we can, some scenarios, right? So the last group of scenarios we did we just built six of them are three-dimensional scenarios where you can actually go through and actually be part of the scenario. You're living the scenario as you're going through this 3D world, this immersive world. So there's a lot of different other technologies VR, ai, all the things we can think about that we can bring to play.
Speaker 2:I think the thing about AI is that, of course, I've worked with Mike and other people who do a great job, but all of whom understand that the human aspect of insights and so on is very important to this. Now, I've actually been working with Mika Houghton for the last year on. I can't tell you all about it because we're about to finish on a whole AI program process related to future studies, but not to the trend collection part of it. Nothing to do with other stuff, much more about stuff I was talking about earlier, about the thinking part of future studies, right, the insight. Now, what I found first. So we've been training the AI for a year from sources that well, the obvious sources, but also many, many, many sources that actually have no bearing what you traditionally think related to future studies Obviously, many of them being mine, right, but from all sorts of things, from biochem to whatever, everything right. And what I've been working with it on is to teach it to think to a certain degree like me and to try and understand my. So fill it with stuff from my subconscious and with my unconscious. I mean, it's pretty possible, right. So that gives a much deeper type of response to any question than it would if you just let it do it with chachi chichi beef, and it's quite interesting. We've got some really great results, but you know, for example, I'd wanted initially I've got a new book coming out and I want it.
Speaker 2:That's been coming out for about nine months, and the reason it stopped is because I wanted to bring out a totally different version as an AI book, and what I found was it's lost its soul, completely right, and that's what actually drove me to begin. And then I realised that I remembered one of the things that I did learn from Jesus. He wrote a book called Rhythm Science, in 2009, I think, and he made an online book as well. The online book actually had nothing to do with, had little to do with the actual book. What he did, he took the main, what he felt that the readers had told him through the reviews were the main concepts in the real book, and he made the online book just based on those concepts. So it was a very different view. I remembered that back in the day. Actually, in general and I was thinking about that with mine I was thinking I don't want an AI version of my book.
Speaker 2:You know, what I want is to sort of push AI to see what it could actually deliver from more of a contextual perspective or a conceptual perspective of the ideas I've got in my book. So how does it see some of the topics that I'm playing with? Does it see them from a very, very different perspective? Can it actually break it down? Can I keep training it and pushing it to break it down with new perspectives? Can it add new perspectives? Can it actually go through the process of data, information, knowledge, wisdom? Is that possible for my AI to do that right? Is it always going to be in the knowledge part, right? Can it actually add any wisdom? And so we've been working on that too, and we've achieved some pretty incredible results. Soon you'll hear about it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think there's a role, right, lots of different roles, both for AI and all the other. But do I think that ultimately, it may replace the futurists in the way that we think of them today? But do I believe there's a role for speculative design? Do I think there's a role for all of the essence of what we do, not necessarily the processes and procedures of what we do, but the essence of what we're bringing to the table. And you know, you can call it anticipatory, whatever, you know, I don't really those are all words. To me, if it can solve that issue of demonstrating to me this true idea of future potential in any format, then I think that it will have done something amazing. And I do believe that AGI you know all the self-developing AIs and so on will be unbelievable and will be far beyond what I'm even thinking it can do now or talk about.
Speaker 2:But you know, I see I've done a lot of thing on the future of work right, of workspaces and things like that the work sphere and I've been working probably about four or five years now, with quite a few organisations on what we call HMR Human Machine Research rather than HR and a lot of the elements are sort of within, that is, understanding both machines and humans as intelligent assets, rather than one in a support role and the other in a different part of the system. More like, they've got job descriptions. And what are those job descriptions in any particular part of a process, the model that you're working with, right? How do you allocate those assets, going through exactly the same processes that you would for a human with the machine Also, that's an investment model. So what are the risks you're using? What's the performance management values you're using? What metrics are you using? What effectiveness and efficiency and all these types of things?
Speaker 2:And when you start to think of humans and machines as a package, well, both individually, as a package, with those roles, and you start to look at the frameworks that you can bring to bear on this, to see where the you know, do I want to invest in this back-end machinery at the end of the day? Because if I have more people, you know it's all the sort of typical thing, right? What are the future job descriptions that can go with that job. What's the potential for migration of current skills into the new skills? All these things are part of this, right, and so I feel like we've got to do the same for future studies.
Speaker 2:Right, we've got to sort of really understand yes, there will be machines, agents, whatever you want to call them functioning within our field, them functioning within our field, but you know they're as important as we are, maybe, but we need to be sure how we allocate the usage of both and what those intelligent assets bring to the table and where they're both beneficial. And now they're crossovers on that right. Should we be using both? Should we be using both? For when I talk about, you know, imagining the abstract, should I do it with a machine and do it myself? You know what sort of different responses am I going to get. The lazy way of going about this is just to use the.
Speaker 1:AI. Right. Well, that's the yeah, that's the crutch, that's the lazy part right, I mean that's, but that's not.
Speaker 2:Then you know, if we want to be a profession, if we want to be these superhuman futurists, then we need to wake up right.
Speaker 1:Well I think about. It brings to my mind you know, the tools that we have at our disposal right, Especially like, say, let's take signals, work right, people are looking for all kinds of fringe. You know you're trying to synthesize. When you don't have a full team, you're on your own. It's hard to do and it's hard to keep track and hard to keep and it's easily something that can just kind of push to the side when to deal with lots of unstructured data and lots of information. You know AI can be. It can be a resource or a virtual, a digital twin, like you can create a digital twin of a futurist right to do a lot of that work To your point. Yeah, you could be lazy and have it spit out scenarios or spit out other things, but you want to be able to leverage that and I think that the those who can use it in a proper way, the potential is going to make it stand out that if you don't use it, then it's. You're just. You know it's like I I don't know why this popped in my head.
Speaker 1:I just think about mowing the lawn. You can have a sitting riding mower that's got power right. That's huge. The big ones that are just like and you know. Then there's the push mower. That's just literally manual, it's like, it's essentially like sith blade, like you're just like you're just pushing along with a, with a cylinder, and it's like when you don't have, you don't have to. Um. But let me, is we kind of kind of wrap this kind of move toward the, this conversation? One thing that you know I like to ask kind of some the short, kind of quick questions and you've read, you know obviously, so many books over the years like what do you think provides and like and think about possible futures? Like what's something that provides really like that in fiction or non-fiction, insightful glimpse into, like our pot, like the future, possible futures, like what you've been reading or what you might have seen?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean I think there are multiple. So if you went, if you go to my um goodreads, you'll obviously get a very good breakdown answer for that. But you'd be surprised. I don't read now so much businessy type books are what would be perceived as fairly straight books I'm looking at totally different I suppose you'd say types of books really and I read a lot of substack stuff. I'm very present on substack right in terms of who I follow, what I read and so on, because it reminds me very much of the early days of bloggers, when everyone said bloggers this is ridiculous. You know, most of my friends back in the day, like Dougie and all these people were bloggers, right, and they're the people at the sharp end of what's going on, right. So I tend to they're the people developing this stuff. They're not the people who are reviewing it, they're the people who are actually, you know, coming out with original work.
Speaker 1:Well, who are some of your favorite Substack authors?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, I read. Oh, because I usually put Monocle on. Well, of course, I can go through them. There's a guy called John Title who I really really like. He's a technology guy, so let me turn there are, and let me come back on that because I'd like to give you a quick thought.
Speaker 2:The other part I would tell you regarding that is, obviously, I watch a lot of Netflix, like everybody else does, but I also think it's important that I follow, you see, what I would say from the well particularly, it would be that living the future is the most important factor. Okay, so it's how to put it. It's not enough to sort of read about it, pretend that you know what's going on. You've got to live it. I think that's you know whether you're living it through reading something or whether you're living it through, I don't know, still going to obscure events. Or you know being part of unusual groups or constantly being in touch with your network of experts, you know from MIT or Georgia Tech or somewhere. All these are part of that reference right of where information comes from, and it's not. I mean, there's a difference between deep scanning, deep horizon scanning and, just literally our everyday relationship with the future. You mentioned earlier about young people should always be part of the future and so on, but I think we should too. That's the point really. What do?
Speaker 1:you think is out there the next decade? What's a bold kind of signal for you? I don't like to use the word prediction, but what do you think is out there right now that excites you?
Speaker 2:What excites me? I've always believed that you sort of have to live the field Okay, but it's not good enough to just keep reviewing stuff. I mean you can't live everything right, but there's lots of things you can and you know. Part of that, I suppose, is if you're I don't want to use the word progressive in the American political perspective, but you know just a progressive but you tend not to stop. You know you're not a much. You know you're made to say, oh, let's go to a Led Zeppelin concert or something you know because you're out there following, looking at some really weird stuff that's going on out there and understanding or trying to see what's happening with rhythm and grind, rough sound or stuff like that which is really on the edge, because you want to see what those people are doing, what lifestyles they have and how those lifestyles are going to mature, if they are, or are they just going to die, right? I mean, you know like sort of the neo-punk scene is big at the moment, but what does that actually mean, right, in terms of, you know, future movements, as I mentioned earlier, future scenes and so on and so forth, time at this whole, maybe more from the human perspective, of where we're going. What can we expect from the societies, particularly working in UAE and so on, where 90% of the population are Northern Emiratis? Now, what sort of society is that going to bring? What does that look like in the future? How do we deal with all these mixed cultures? So I'm much more, I think, trying to understand those aspects of where we're going right. So, yes, I can talk to you about transdisciplinary sciences and what I know is coming together what I see from things like neuroforensics nowadays and where neuroscience joins in with media and marketing, and what that's going to mean for hyperpersonalization. Yeah, of course, they're all parts of our life. Obviously, look at some of the geopolitical things and discuss those, but in reality, I don't know that that is so helpful unless you're really playing with this and seeing how you can apply.
Speaker 2:And remember I said to you earlier that I'd developed all these courses for various universities right over the past few years and what was interesting about that to me was that I was able to create courses that were all transdisciplinary. And the fear at the beginning well, who's going to teach this? Right, I mean? And I said, well, you have the professors here. They're just not. They're all in silos at the moment and we've got to find a way of interesting them, you know, getting them interested enough to want to be, you know, part of some new ideas for courses.
Speaker 2:So I developed these you know, some 25 or something new courses, and it got me thinking about how we that we're not going to really move forward, I mean in real terms move forward. Yes, we can have advances in medicine, we can have advances in, we can have advances in science. What's going to happen in genetic engineering and all that, and we can all talk. I can talk about that for hours and hours. But what I really would like to see is real progress in from K through 12, all the way through, in the way that we revisit what education really is for the future. Because unless we can do that, I think it's going to be really, really difficult. And so I suppose I see for me that's going to be one of my areas.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you know, I wrote a book on the augmented learner where I looked at the role of multimeter enhanced learning, with foresight based learning designed to accelerate the delivery of higher levels of creativity.
Speaker 2:I create this whole new learning system based on it.
Speaker 2:But what, to me is critical about it is that it gave me the opportunity to really study and understand still how we're actually learning things, how we're actually learning things, and I feel like all the time it's siloed, it's just literally not going to take us anywhere and we're not going to find real solutions to really complex situations we're going to turn up with. I mean, if you want me to say what I think is going to happen with artificial nature, what I think is going to happen with artificial nature, what I think is going to happen with, you know, interspecies, collaboration, plant intelligence or I don't know, on things like, you know, social alliances in the future, of cyborg fashion or transhumanism and cyborgs and whatever I mean. I can talk about all this stuff, right, I mean because that's my job, but that's not going to mean very much unless we can bring up society to be ready to even vaguely interact with any of that. And I mean the big part of society, not the quasi-intellectuals that I spend my life with, and intellectuals, not that.
Speaker 1:It's. You know it's as much as I'm saving in the 529 plan for his college. I don't think college is going to exist in the mid. I don't think in 10 years there might be other institutions like Harvard or other ones that might still, because of their large endowments and their institutions. But I think it'll. Decentralize and fracture is probably the wrong word, but I think it'll. I think it will allow for a lot more scaffolding, like lattice type of like acquiring different knowledge parts and me. You could affiliate yourself with a school, but yeah, that's a. That's a crazy bit, bit crazy.
Speaker 1:The other one I I just think we're headed for in. You know, super shifts. I have this like subspecies of humans. I think we're going to. I think we're headed for in. You know super shifts. I have this like subspecies of humans. I think we're going to. I think we're going to we talk about. You know we're tribal people. Humans are tribal. You know just some way we organize nations, the way we fight, I think, and even just the divide here in the united states, in other parts of the world too. It's always that left, right or whatever, this, this versus that. I think there's going to be a tribalism of those who are enhanced, those who are integrated in with technology to a consciousness. There's going to be groups of humanity that's going to just wall itself off because, just by virtue of what you have connected to your body or you've changed, those are my like, we um out there.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's interesting how you come about, because actually, sort of like, so, when, when it comes down to work right, futures work then you, then you've really got to begin to believe, to understand how all this fits together right. That's the time when you begin to sort of see how this fits together. So, let's say, I'm working on the future of rehabilitation prisons, I'm working on 2040. And you start off with smart prisons, how that changes and the whole attitude towards rehabilitation and so on. Then you start talking about implants towards rehabilitation and so on. Then you start to move on in plants and then you go on to a variety of systems of understanding more because you can, or neuroscience, or predisposition towards crime. Then you start to think of, well, what can I do here to really, you know, work on remodeling humans, and as it goes on and on and on, you get to see a place for all of this, so it fits into having some sort of real meaning to it, and every one of those parts is ethically really questionable. And then you start to say, well, that's impossible. And then you start to sort of begin to study what's happening in rebel science, what's happening in underground labs around the world, in China, in the UK, in the States and so on. What's the DIY side of bioengineering, of genetic engineering? And when you think about the maker movement from the early 2000s and how that progressed and where that's come today, and then you think about the early we talked about it earlier with the well and the early computer groups and so on and so forth, and you can begin to see these new themes emerging that are being pushed by illegal labs underground. We talk about the corridors of, you know, underground development, the underbelly of invisible studios and all this stuff, but they really are happening of underground development, the underbelly of invisible studios and all this stuff, but they really are happening. And so there's a sort of a life, which is why I talked about actually trying to live the future, to live the future. To me, that's where I feel I at least can begin to understand where the challenges are and the real radical ramifications of what we will be seeing in the not-too-distant future. Interestingly like the conversations we're having now over ethical AI and everything else. I mean, first of all, it should have happened earlier, obviously, but I mean popularist today, right in a way. And yet we're not having discussions on recombinant species, on robot love.
Speaker 2:What's really happening with virtual objects If we have the full metaverse, a holistic metaverse? What's cybercrime, what's metacrime going to be like in the metaverse? What's going to happen to the dark parts? All these areas which you know, literally are all part of our lives. It's like we sort of see life most of the time as this sort of top level. As you know, sahil would say, right, the bit above the water. And yet that's not really as Netflix reminds us. That's actually not life for so many people, and I think it's strange like I mean to answer those sort of questions of what do you see? I see all these things because they are all part of where life is going. They may not impact massive groups of people, but they will be there and at points in time they could very easily. If we have clones, micro clones that can carry, you know, mini nukes, then what's happening in labs today is really really important, right? So there's sort of a different side to, I suppose, what I see is happening out there.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't want to Right. Where can people find, obviously, the Futures Lab. Where can they learn more about what you do and connect with you? I would assume LinkedIn. It's a good place. But, yeah, where they find Futures Lab, where are the things that they can?
Speaker 2:I would. I mean, well, you can find me in loads of. I'm like my daughter. My daughter's a rock star, right? So the one thing I don't have to carry a picture of my daughter, I just go to Google and find thousands of pictures. Now, I've not quite reached that yet, so I'm living in the shadow of my daughter, but at least you can find plenty about me on the web and I'm very open about communication. Obviously, I've got books and stuff and papers and whatever, but I'm always happy, always very happy to have one-on-ones whether it's on Zoom or whatever it happens to be with anyone who's really interested and I like to respond. You know I'm not an influencer, but I'd like to be a person who's happy to respond to anyone that has any question about anything I've talked about. You can reach me at dwoodgate, at futures-labcom, Anytime, and you know I'll probably end up in a WhatsApp call or a Zoom or whatever it happens to be.
Speaker 1:I encourage everyone to connect with Derek. Thanks for being on and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much. I love the hosting, I love the program and I'm very grateful for absolutely. Thank you so much. I love the hosting, I love the program and I'm very grateful for the invite. Thank you Anytime. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show.
Speaker 1:See you next time.
