The Future According to Women

The Future According to Women BY MIRA BLUMENTHAL EMILY EMPEL ASHLEY PEREZ KARP ESTHER ROGERS FEATURE DESIGNER RACHEL MIN

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Table of Contents Introduction

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Everyone's an Army The Future of Security

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The Future of Gaming

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The Future of Humanity

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Our Thinking

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Parent Relations The Future of Entrepreneurship

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The Future of Fantasy

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The Future of Branding

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Our Thinking

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Virtual Firsts The Future of Sex

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The Future of Girlhood

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The Future of Gender

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Our Thinking

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Reverse Trace Design The Future of Identity

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The Future of Space

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The Future of Oceans

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Our Thinking

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Words for the Unknown The Future of Science

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The Future of Women’s Health

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The Future of Agriculture

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Our Thinking

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Think about the women who influence your thinking. You know the ones. They are the women you retweet, the ones whose podcasts you can’t wait to stream, and the writers whose blog posts and books you diligently consume.

They’re the ones who have the ideas that you can’t wait to share with your friends. Now think about who influences your thinking on the future. Are any of those women still on the list?

As a society, we tend to repeatedly hand over power to the same few people to envision the future for us. The Ray Kurzweils, Elon Musks, and Sergey Brins of the world are cited in countless thought pieces. The future we read about is made up of recycled bits of interviews curated from the minds of a few great men innovating in Silicon Valley. As it stands today, the prerequisites for being an expert on the future are running a tech startup that’s gone public, or directing sci-fi blockbusters.

In this feature, we set out to challenge this model. For us, there’s a gap between our everyday influencers and those who influence our thinking about the future. We wondered: What would happen if we purposefully built a view of the future curated entirely from the perspectives of women? Would talking to a large group of women (instead of a token female) yield a different view of the future? And so, we started this experiment.

We spoke to over 40 different women about their respective areas of expertise. We didn't

ask them about how women might change the future; instead, we invited them to imagine how the future might be different than today.

We were surprised to find that, in many of our conversations, the most insightful takeaways were not directly linked to the interviewee’s industry or profession, but rather to their personal experiences.

Then we had to make sense of it all. We began to link their perspectives together in unexpected ways, and new future possibilities emerged. What if, in the future, the everyday person was able to wage war and enforce laws? What if, in the future, parents were treated as a political collective? What if, in the future, VR could be used as a sexual education tool for teens?

In the pages ahead, you’ll be introduced to five themes. For three of them, we highlighted a set of abbreviated interviews and key takeaways from our conversations. We then developed a thesis (“Our Thinking”) and a scenario to challenge how we think about the future today.

These sections aren’t aspirations, visions, or solutions to any single conversation we had, but rather, they are designed to be starting points for deeper conversations. We tried to cover the “What would happen if…?” and now it’s up to you to decide: “Would we even want that to happen?” or, “How might that happen differently?” So, without further ado, we are excited to present to you The Future According to Women.

#femalefutures

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Everyone's an Army

As advanced technology is democratized and increased access is given to the individual, new opportunities will arise to both reduce and create conflict. What happens when the ability to wage war – and enforce laws or ideological beliefs – is taken up by the masses?

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The Future of Security We often take security for granted – until, that is, airplanes crash into our skyscrapers or anthrax arrives in the mail. A period of high alert follows, after which our sense of danger diminishes and we’re back to our usual state. But for Sharon Burke, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy in the Obama Administration, security is a constant consideration – and it’s not only biowarfare, tainted food sources, or radicalized governments that are top of mind for her, but the access that we all have at our fingertips, the implications of energy use on conflict, and how we can carve out a better future when the outlook looks grim.

Q How will technology change our

notions of national security, the military, or warfare in the future?

SHARON BURKE Sharon Burke is a Senior Advisor to New America, where she focuses on international security.

Previously, Sharon served in the Obama Administration as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy, a new office that worked to improve the energy security of US military operations.

The most advanced warfare technologies used to be in the hands of soldiers and now they're in everyone’s. You're seeing this democratization and globalization of weapons. You're seeing cellphones, the internet, additive manufacturing, drones, and all this equipment of war becoming far more widespread.

For national security, we're seeing technologies entering the military sphere globally – robotics, AI, bioengineering, missile technology, electronic warfare.

Then you have nations still looking at each other as friend or foe, and nonnation threats, such as the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. These are individuals that aren't particularly well resourced, but can access pretty lethal technolo-

gies, and that trend is going up. It's still unclear what all that means for future security. What is the democratization and globalization of all these technologies going to look like in 50 to 100 years?

Q What does it mean to attack each

other in cyberspace rather than in a physical space with tanks and combat aircrafts?

The definitions of battle and war and weapon are shifting. We think of a war like World War II, which was big mechanized armies clashing on a field of battle, but now, to some degree, we're in a low intensity war in cyberspace.

Q How does energy fit within this

broader ecosystem?

Energy is such an interesting element when it comes to security, war, and peace

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because it shapes the global security environment, geopolitics, and the relationships between nations. Who has it, who wants it, where it comes from, how freely it flows, and the effect it has on national governments. Energy is also an input to war, as militaries can't fight without a steady source of energy.

Q How do you imagine our definitions

and uses of energy might be different in the future?

What's so fascinating right now is that the global energy mix – who is producing and who is consuming energy – is changing so dramatically. Right now, the US is once again becoming one of the top oil and gas producing countries, but no one’s sure how long it’s going to last. It could last a decade, it could last 50 years. So that's changing global energy relationships, but when you talk about 50 to 100 years out, we have a small number of producers and a lot of people competing for fuel.

Then you add in climate change, which is threatening the entire landscape of how we live, and the fuels that we consume are creating that problem. We have this conundrum where the energy that animates our entire global economy and keeps us all comfortable is also the energy that's ruining our future. Right now, a lot of global relationships and power are mirrored in who has the resources and who has the wealth, and the way we consume energy changes those patterns.

Q What kind of power-generating

technologies do you hope will become a reality in the future?

It’s human nature to hope that there's going to be some sort of amazing technology that's going to come along and change everything, and we've gotten used to that in some sectors. But that's not the history of energy in the world; energy and technology change very slowly, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect some sort of magical technology is going to come along and change everything overnight.

It's going to have to start with energy efficiency. We're going to be looking for a number of different changes: natural gas in the near term, solar because it's a plentiful resource, geothermal, nuclear – these are all technologies we are going to have to put to various uses. I'm also a big fan of looking at energy services or end users. How do people actually use energy? Rather than just looking at the supplies, look at what people really need in order to change. We’re going to need to change transportation, for example.

It's a major consumer of petroleum fuels and there are a number of hopeful technologies in that space.

Q How important is the role of

women in the future of security?

Women's voices are varied. I've heard people say, “Oh we need more women

Women are often charged or instrumental to those things, so the more women are part of the conversation, the safer we'll be. Women are absolutely necessary for building security in all parts of the world.

Q Are you personally hopeful about

the future?

I choose to be hopeful because there are so many developments that concern, scare, and worry me. I'll tell you a story.

One night, one of my sons was having trouble sleeping and was crying. When I asked him what was wrong, he said “I'm never going to get a chance to grow up because the world is going to end because of climate change and war.” So I hugged him and told him that I think he needs to see it as a challenge. Throughout human history, people have lived

We have this conundrum where the energy that animates our entire global economy and keeps us all comfortable is also the energy that's ruining our future.

in national security because women see security differently.” But I don't really see security all that differently from my male colleagues. But if you bring in varied voices, you're going to have a stronger foundation for building and looking at the future. It's not a uniform progression everywhere, even in my own country, but women are increasingly a part of every industry and the conversation is very important and worth fighting for. In my own lifetime, advances for women have gone in fits and starts, where women have very quickly become part of the conversation and then lost ground. Security, in the broadest sense, means having food on the table, your children safe, and a job to support yourself and/or your family.

with war and disease and death and danger, and always felt like there was nothing but dark clouds on the horizon for each generation.

I told him to look at the white space, not at all the threats and dangers, but at the doctors that create cures, the artists that create beauty, and the military that creates security. The response that humans have always had to threats and dangers is to create and explore and advance. You can either choose to look at everything that’s wrong and be consumed by it, or you can choose to be constructive in the face of it. I really do have faith in our ability to innovate, construct, change, and adapt.

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The Future of Gaming

MARY FLANAGAN Mary Flanagan is a leading innovator, artist, educator, and designer whose works include game-inspired art and commercial games that shift people’s thinking about biases and stereotypes. She is also the author of the acclaimed books, Critical Play and Values at Play in Digital Games.

“We’re at the beginning of a ludic explosion, if you will, where games can begin to frame lots of different parts of our lives,” says Mary Flanagan, an innovator and artist known for her work in gaming. It is, in fact, gaming that Mary believes will help foster a different way for us to look at the world – at how we behave culturally, how we take care of the environment, and how we can manage conflict.

When we think of games and conflict, the two go together quite seamlessly. After all, what is a game without someone or something to prevail against? With this comes images of swords and guns, perhaps some fiery magic spells, and an ultimate hero that emerges amidst the carnage. But Mary sees an alternative future for the medium as well.

“What I’m looking forward to is fostering a lot of diverse game makers and games that take on social issues and take on social responsibilities and nuance in interesting ways,” she says. “I’m really interested in the ways in which we can use popular media forms to actually improve the way we get along with each other, and make the world a better place. We can do that with games because they’re so dynamic, because they allow the player choice and agency.

Games reflect the complexities of the world, because they are themselves a complex art form. I’m looking at how games and new models of game playing could actually help

us solve some of the world’s pressing problems, not only by changing attitudes and beliefs, but also by modeling a problem in new ways.”

Mary acknowledges how problem solving in gaming by shooting everyone is a “binary solution to possibly solving a more complex problem.” She is looking for ways to use gaming to reimagine the entire system. “I really don’t want my world to just be what’s on a screen,” she explains. “I’m actually trying to affect larger cultural systems, like crime, poverty, and all those other big picture questions.”

She critiques our individualistic culture as a particularly significant obstacle, stating that we “need to be able to get out of our superhero mode, and not solve problems like a lone individual in a cape. We need different models of heroic problem solving, and we need to make them participatory, because the future of problem solving is going to involve a lot of people. We need to look at crowdsourcing in informed ways, not in mob mentality ways. We, the designers, of this kind of future have to really engage with these large questions and see games not as a play thing, but as powerful instruments used to understand the world.”

And these instruments don’t only have to come in the guise of blockbuster AAA games or popular apps. It can be a reimagining of some of our oldest games, like chess. “Maybe us against them was a bad model,” Mary argues. “What if chess had more players? What does that game look like?”

It’s clear that, as we stand on the precipice of rising conflicts, we have to look for the best educational tools for working towards solutions – and working with each other.

“I do think we’re going to have more war-like, game-like problems,” she says. “This is one of the reasons why we need better games. Because if we just say, ‘Oh, how we solve problems is we just kill all these people,’ or ‘how we solve problems is in these very binary ways,’ it’s not good for anyone. We have to step up the way we solve problems. We have to step up our thinking as a collective system.”

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The Future of Humanity

MADELINE ASHBY Madeline Ashby is a science fiction writer, futurist, and speaker. She writes a column for the Ottawa Citizen.

She has written narrative scenarios and science fiction prototypes for organizations like Intel Labs, Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, and The Atlantic Council.

Humanity has evolved from developing our most basic survival instincts to creating nearly unimaginable accomplishments – and horrors. Today, it can feel like a utopic or dystopic future are equally plausible. We send probes to the farthest reaches of space, and then we unleash bombs on innocent people. We create inspiring medical breakthroughs, then poison the planet with irresponsible mass production.

So what does this mean for the future of us – the human race? Futurist Madeline Ashby weighs in on our challenges, tendencies, and how we may need to evolve in order to have a future at all.

Q What unexpected challenges will

the human race face in the next 50 to 100 years?

We already have a lot of challenges that we expect, but that we won't acknowledge. Take Zika, for example.

Zika is spread by mosquitoes that live longer thanks to global warming. It can also be spread from mother to child, and it's most likely to spread in countries and regions where access to abortion is criminalized. In that regard, it's the natural consequence of two trends: the trend of refusing

to deal with global warming, and the trend of institutionalized misogyny.

So we'll see more problems like that – problems that exist on two axes at once.

Q Which tools will redefine what it

means to be human?

To be human is to be flawed, and our species is hard at work at preventing, fixing, or eliminating those flaws.

If we want to preserve the potential development of humanity, we have to make multiple types of healthcare available to all types of humans. I'm hoping that the results of experiments in synthetic biology will help us with things like antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, or custom cancer care.

Q How will local and global gover nance and other systems of social organization evolve?

You’ll see a lot more distributed participation. The next big fight is voting rights, and expanding the franchise.

That's not just in the US or Canada, that's everywhere. I'm looking forward to watching the on-demand trend expand to include democracy itself. Major parties everywhere are

leaving votes on the table by not changing their policies. When they look at the margins, they'll expand the franchise.

Q How do you imagine society might

address our human tendency toward behaviors like war or violence in the future?

Violence is a behavior, but war isn't.

War is a choice. Or rather, it is the failure of all other choices. It's also a lack of imagination at work. And it's profitable – it looks good for the procurement budget – so it's easy to reach for as a strategy. It's really easy to throw money and bullets at a problem. It's much more complicated to engage in human-centered development that empowers people on the ground and gives them real agency on the path towards change.

We have to stop thinking about war as rescue. War isn't rescue. It's complication. People want power so they can have autonomy and freedom. So the real task is to give them autonomy and freedom. Which is to say, the best way to prevent war is to end poverty. And if we ever develop real universal basic incomes, possibly even with blockchains and alternative currencies, we can do that.

Q Do you believe humans have a

future? If yes, is it a future on Earth?

Some humans have a future. And some humans have a future on Earth.

And other humans have a future in space, with a long list of caveats regarding augmentation of the human body itself.

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War is a choice. Or rather, it is the failure of all other choices.

It's also a lack of imagination at work.

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Julia Hemphill Research Consultant, nonprofit sector

The Future of Labor In terms of digital spaces, if you are a woman, and you exist on the internet, you are subject to abuse. There are about a million examples of this. At the moment I’m thinking about Anita Sarkeesian and that time she wanted to discuss misogyny in video games. Her efforts were famously met with a barrage threats of rape and abuse. Women in science are likewise subject to discrimination, misogyny, and sadly, sexual harassment.

There is no doubt that the internet can be a space where misogyny, racism, homophobia, and all of those other awful phobias and -isms can fester.

Catherine Cosgrove Chief of Staff to the Executive of RES PUBLICA Consulting Group

The Future of Governance Decision makers have never had so much information and so many analytical tools available to them in history, and the speed at which such tools are being developed is impressive.

Rita J. King Co-Director of Science House, a cathedral of the imagination where teams create the future they imagine

The Future of Science So much of the technology we create is used for war and entertainment. As humans, have we ever captured the upside of tech without the downside? It’s just the reality. We have weapons to hunt – well, we can kill people with them.

E V E R YO N E ' S A N A R M Y

Julielynn Wong MD, MPH, is an award-winning, Harvard-educated physician, scientist, innovator, pilot, communicator, educator, and the founder of 3D4MD

The Future of Healthcare With 3D printing, physical objects can be stored as digital files. So it’s possible to email supplies around the globe or uplink objects to space. Now it’s possible to take an idea, create a digital design, and make it physically real by clicking “print.”

Alexandra Chong President at Badoo, a dating-focused social networking platform

The Future of Dating There is a very thin line between being super open and connected [online] and having access to everything while maintaining your privacy.

From a legal perspective, legislation and case law have not been able to catch up with the speed and rate of technology.

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EVERYONE'S AN ARMY

Our Thinking What if the power to enforce laws or ideological beliefs fell into the hands of the everyday citizen?

Today, the rules of war are known; a soldier’s behavior is meant to be kept in check through clearly defined rules of engagement. But now, we are inventing new ways of waging war through methods that will be accessible to anyone, not only centralized governments or organized militia groups. As we move toward this future, the world might get worse before it gets better. If war is less prescribed and more experimental, it will be harder to take a proactive approach to national security, let alone personal security.

Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Nobody could fully fathom the repercussions of nuclear warfare until the first atomic bomb was deployed. In the future, what new forms will democratized warfare take? Will these intensify acts like cyberbullying or simply offer new platforms for radical extremists?

Already there is a new type of fear being created: everyone’s an army, and everyone’s a threat. Today, we see this manifesting in newspaper headline blips, like the interrogation of a 13-year-old schoolboy by the Secret Service over a Facebook post they misinterpreted as a threat to President Obama. Or “swatting,” where an emergency response team is called to investigate a faked emergency, such as a bogus bomb threat. The power to turn us against one another has become as easy as making one phone call. The next iteration could be much worse than calling in a SWAT team on your neighbor because you don’t like their choice of music at 2 a.m.

Technology is creating a space for people to join together, regardless of their backgrounds and credentials,

and create their own armies. Groups like Anonymous or ISIS are large-scale, modern-day examples. But what if more cohesive micro-armies emerged, centered around causes that aren’t always as extreme? What would your neighbor or roommate be fighting for? And what if you weren’t always on the same side?

The digital space provides positive connections for billions of individuals around the world – but the way we share data can also provide access into our everyday, in-the-flesh lives. In the future, selective targeting or bullying could be as easy offline as it is online today.

Imagine if groups were able to use your geolocation and IoT footprint to control the appliances in your house, increasing radiation levels to slowly poison you. Or, more subtly, they tampered with your sleep cycle by increasing the blue light emitted by devices, which has been shown to lower melatonin production.

It’s not all grim though; the women we interviewed – and in particular Sharon Burke, Madeline Ashby, and Mary Flanagan – continue to be hopeful for the future.

Sharon, for example, tells the story of her young son being unable to sleep because of his fears of the future, of climate change and war. But she goes on to explain how every generation has felt this hopelessness, and it’s within this feeling of despair that humankind takes problem solving to new heights and finds a way to persevere.

To better illustrate this, we have created a future scenario where we explore the possibilities in using democratized technology to create an army and fight flawed ideologies. As Madeline stated, war is a choice.

By acknowledging this, we are giving ourselves permission to choose unique ways of engaging with conflict.

E V E R YO N E ' S A N A R M Y

Hacking Persuasion Avery coded a few finishing touches into her ad hack. A pop of color here, a video tweak there. Perfect. It was relatively simple and to the point – almost indiscernible, yet strong enough to catch the eye and deliver its hidden message – but you’d never think it wasn’t designed by Walmart’s digital team.

She’d seen her mother, Kim, hack targeted ads thousands of times – not that she had any idea what was going on in the beginning. But, as Avery began to learn more, it didn’t take a coding genius to understand that her mother was a member of Shhhe, a hacking group dedicated to the protection of human rights from the Free Militia. Sometimes Avery even imagined that her mother was their leader – but if that were true, they’d probably live in a bigger apartment. Maybe even a house.

Not one to waste her skills, Avery put her budding coding genius to use by rewriting her grades every semester up until now. It was easy. But today, instead of simply changing her grades, she wondered if she could “encourage” her teachers to edit them on their own. It was her first attempt at this level of shadow hacking.

Avery logged into her mother’s account to upload the first ad. She set the target audience. Teachers, 27-55, located within 10-25 miles of Charlottesville, frequently searches for the following keywords: “lesson plans,” “TED-ED,” “difficult students.”

“Avery! What are you up to?” she heard in the background. Rolling her eyes, she quickly pressed the submit button.

Kim had just gotten out of the shower. She barely caught a glimpse of the ad upload confirmation page before it was exited, and she felt a sinking feeling. It was time to have a talk.

Since Avery was three, Kim recognized that her daughter was gifted in the art of persuasive technology. Kim had tried to hide her participation in

Shhhe for years. But, when Avery was nine, Kim and a group of women trolled a growing hate speechfueled Free Militia site. One of the women made a critical error by leaving her IP address open. The group tracked her social history and geolocated each of the women, hacking their smart devices to emit a dangerous amount of radiation. A conversation that had started on a message board had now escalated into a war outside the digital space. Kim was lucky – she realized what was happening fast enough. Unlike some of the other women, her reproductive organs were left intact.

After this, Kim moved away from the city and formed Shhhe. She wondered if subtle priming on the web could ever create a new normal for society – a safer normal. Social media sites had successfully tried it years ago by altering social feeds for mood.

Kim took it to the next level by embedding persuasion into hacked ads, and soon realized that not only did it work, it was mercilessly effective. Corporations had been doing this for years; now anyone with a device and an IP scrambler could quite literally change and influence the world.

Kim made her primary income through hired mercenary jobs via Shhhe. As Shhhe grew in size, so did Avery’s interest in her mother’s job. And, as Kim had worried, Avery picked up on a lot of her skills.

But instead of using it for social justice, she was more concerned about hacking her grades, or using persuasive technology on her classmates so that she could be popular.

Kim knew it was time for them to sit down and have the talk. Even if she came off sounding like a hypocrite, she was too worried that Avery could go down a dangerous road beyond hacked grades – into the physical space – like the Free Militia. The road there was easier than it looked; that’s what scared her. A synthetic biohack here, targeted radiation poisoning there. Kim always had a personal code of ethics. Now she had to figure out the best way to encourage her daughter to create her own, and stay out of jail.

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Parent Relations

A growing contingent of unfulfilled parents is expanding worldwide. As their work is increasingly expected to blur with home life, the ability of parents to balance both realities is wholly dependent on the policies of their employers. What if parents exercised their power to collectively bargain for new workplace benefits?

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PA R E N T R E L AT I O N S

The Future of Entrepreneurship Parents today are master multitaskers, and Randi Zuckerberg could very well be a poster girl for it. She is not only Founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, but also the author of two books, the host of a weekly radio show, a TV host and producer, a Broadway star, and a mother of two. We spoke to Randi to discuss motherhood and entrepreneurship, the role models of the future, and how to keep up when your kids are digital natives.

Q What kinds of role models do you

think girls need today, and how might these change by 2040?

RANDI ZUCKERBERG Randi Zuckerberg is an author, the founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media, host of Dot Complicated on SiriusXM, editor-in-chief of DotComplicated.co, and a mentor on Oxygen’s show Quit Your Day Job. As an early executive at Facebook, Randi created and ran the social media pioneer's marketing programs. Since starting Zuckerberg Media, Randi has produced shows and digital content for PayPal, Clinton Global Initiative, and Condé Nast.

Today, there are multiple generations of women that each have differing degrees of digital savviness, so the role model we need is more of an educator; it’s more a kind of friend, one that says “alright, this is the world – it’s scary, give it a try.”

But girls that are born today, they’re digital natives. They don’t know a world where girls and boys have different access online. They don’t know a world where women aren’t tech savvy. So I think, in the future, the role models that we’re going to need are more pop culture icons that are techy, that are digital, and that are women.

I’d love to see female movie stars and pop stars represented in a way where

they’re the tech savvy ones, they’re the coders. When HBO does the next version of Silicon Valley, I’d love to see a woman represented on screen. I’d love to see more TV shows like the children’s show I’m working on now: Dot. I think, right now, getting women into tech is about basic education – giving them coding classes, encouraging them to set the tone for their daughters – but there needs to be a next step. In the future, girls need to see that it’s cool, that it’s normal, that women in pop culture are very tech savvy and they’re leaders.

Q What sort of considerations might

be built into “The Valley” moving forward, especially when designing for girls?

Girls should not know that there are “girl colors” or “girl themes.” We talk about this a lot when working on Dot.

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Being a parent is almost like being the CEO of a small company.

We were thinking: “Should we do an episode where Dot has overcome stereotypes, where people think she can’t do something because she’s a girl?” And then we thought, “Wait a minute – young girls today don’t know that they can’t do anything.

Why would we put that into their heads?” It’s going to be really important that toys, games, pop culture, and other media in the future don’t create a gap or a wedge between what girls and boys can do, what they should think, or what colors they should use.

I’d love to see all STEM learning toys be gender neutral.

preneurs, as investors, as CEOs – not as female entrepreneurs, or female investors, or female CEOs. I hope that we start to see enough gender parity in these industries so that it’s not even a word that you’ll need in front of your title a few decades from now.

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In your opinion, is there a correlation between parenting and entrepreneurship?

Q

Being a parent is almost like being the CEO of a small company. You have to really think: “OK, what kind of company culture am I creating? What’s our mission? What is the end vision and the outcome?”

If you’re a female entrepreneur today, you are very aware that you are a woman. Whenever I set foot anywhere tech related, I am very aware of being female – every single day of my career. I hope that, in the future, we’ll just think of ourselves as entre-

Another similarity that I see – and I think this is marvelous – is that, as an entrepreneur, you have to be really flexible. If the macroeconomic trends change, you need to be open to changing your company. If something happens in the marketplace, and you need to change your idea completely,

What might it mean to be a woman entrepreneur in the future?

you need to be adaptable. Similarly, as a parent, you go into it with ideas – but you can’t know how it’s really going to be.

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What trends or changes do you see disrupting parenting in the next 10 to 15 years?

It’s going to be harder and harder for parents to keep up with the digital savviness of their children. There are new apps and websites that are coming out on a daily basis. Even the most tech-savvy of us parents are going to be lapped by our children. And so, instead of what a lot of parents do today – which often involves hovering over children on their computers and having access to their accounts and passwords – that relationship is going to have to change, simply because parents won’t be able to keep up with everything their children are doing.

And that is a little bit scary, but also a little bit exciting.

PA R E N T R E L AT I O N S

The Future of Fantasy Imagining what’s to come is no easy feat. With techno- and male-centric perspectives often at the core of popular cultural depictions of “The Future,” many marginalized groups remain just that – on the fringes and unaccounted for. Enter Adrienne Maree Brown: visionary fiction writer, doula, and pleasure activist. Adrienne is committed to popularizing ideas of the future that are, in some ways, antithetical to the mainstream; futures that challenge, bring into question, and force us to reevaluate our systems of education, government, and self-expression.

Q What is visionary fiction?

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN Adrienne Maree Brown is the Co-Editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, as well as a pleasure activist, doula, healer, facilitator, and writer.

Visionary fiction, at its root, is the place where thinking about the future and being cognizant of present day circumstances come together. Right now, we are living inside the imagination of white supremacists and patriarchal men who see the future as a place to dominate. They seek to dominate the resources and the planet itself. Right now, a police officer can imagine that a young, unarmed black person is dangerous and can shoot them with impunity. That's actually an act of imagination. Visionary fiction is a way of responding to and reclaiming the territory of imagination, saying: Anything that we create, we first have to be able to see in our minds and create a shared vision. We want that vision to be bottom-up and oriented to the collective. The more people who collaborate on creating a vision for the future, the more people will find a home in that future.

Q How do you see the work that

you're doing figuring into your vision for the future?

A lot of my work is around reclaiming our right to imagine. If I'm successful, there will be a lot of people who get marginalized in our current system – people of color, poor people, women, trans people, people with disabilities, queer people – who will be at the frontline of envisioning what's next, and I think that's really important.

When I tell people that marginalized groups will be coming up with visionary solutions so that we're not just surviving but actually improving the quality of our lives, they say: “You're insane, it's not possible that quality of life is going to get worse.” But that's because we have a very capitalist view of quality of life and it's all about size, growth, luxury, and comfort, instead of the quality of life that comes from deep connection,

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I want more female leadership in the world. I want to see futures emerge from a feminine and feminist perspective, but I don't think that ultimately has to be gendered.

from taking good care of your family, from knowing that you have total support and other people are looking out for your personal abundance. I hope that the work I'm doing with marginalized communities helps to make value shifts feel more possible, more viable, and more exciting.

Q Is there something uniquely specific to women that fuels

your visionary thinking?

Gender is a kind of socialized space; we get created and then we buy into it. At some point I get turned into a girl or turned into a boy based on my family and my belief systems, and that has an impact. The impact of “boy” is very much about a penetrative experience in the world. “I'm going go out and dominate in order to get where I want.” The space that women are given is “I'm going to create, I'm going to open, hold, protect, care for,” and over time that does produce a certain capacity or set of capacities. I want more female leadership in the world. I want to see futures emerge from a feminine and feminist perspective, but I don't think that ultimately has to be gendered.

When I meet feminist men, I get really excited by that. Every human being has the full gender perspective within them.

I long for a return to witches and women who are powerful in their magic and who are seen in their connection to each other and to creating and bearing life, to that space in your body. I do a lot of work as a doula, and it's been incredible to support people through that journey. There's something about having that journey, having that capacity, that creates a different relationship to all living things. I'm not a mother myself, but I wonder what the future would look like if the only people who could determine it were those who had spent nine months carrying a child within them. I think you'd be less likely to destroy everything if you'd gone through that process.

When you've created everything and everyone around you, there is a sense of shared resources, shared abundance, that the ultimate abundance is family, and everyone in your society is part of your family because they're all part of raising and

shaping your children. The most valuable resource in that society is the future generation. Right now, there are many indigenous cultures that are oriented this way, where there are matriarchal lines and the future is held in the hands of the mothers and grandmothers. So this is not just a far off, sci-fi idea. The trouble we run up against is whether or not that society could coexist with societies that are run by men or that are dominated by the views of men.

Q What contribution do you see your work in visionary

thinking making to the world of marketing and branding both currently and in the future?

I think most products are marketing a vision of the world.

As you're trying to sell something, you're fundamentally also selling a future – a future in which people need whatever it is that you have to offer. It always blows my mind that there are corporate structures that use the corporate space to advance technologies or practices that harm the planet, because it just seems so shortsighted as a corporate strategy. These are your consumers. Even if you can't love all of humanity, if you get rid of them, if we're all dead, no one is going to buy your products.

Q What will feminism look like in 40 years?

Figuring out our relationship to our womanness is going to be a new horizon. A lot of people in my community are using “they” and “them” pronouns instead of saying “she,” “her,” or “he,” “him.” I grew up in an environment where it was all about being a strong black woman – but I can now feel that slipping away from me. The woman part feels less and less important; the feminism part, and the humanism part, feels more and more important. I'm in a community with people who don't uphold gender as a way to tie our power. So I'm curious: would this issue even exist in 40 years? What is a feminist future, a feminist view of the world in 40 years, decoupled from gender? Things are shifting so fast in my lifetime that I feel that is definitely possible.

PA R E N T R E L AT I O N S

The Future of Branding

MARISA THALBERG Marisa Thalberg is the Chief Marketing Officer at Taco Bell, where she leads all product and brand marketing along with brand engagement functions. Marisa previously spent eight years at The Estée Lauder Companies, Inc., where she pioneered the company’s global digital and social marketing.

As a parent, the idea of balancing your professional and your personal life can feel perpetually out of reach.

But for Marisa Thalberg, CMO of Taco Bell, work-life balance doesn’t need to feel that way – and it starts with making a systemic change at the pop culture level and reevaluating the portrayal of working mothers in the media.

That, in part, is why Marisa started her Executive Moms online community in 2002. The blog was an early step in Marisa’s efforts to change the mainstream narrative that surrounds the working mom: a woman who is all too often depicted as someone who tries to achieve balance but never seems to succeed. For her, it's clear that the ways in which executive mothers are “branded” is not only inaccurate, it’s also unmerited.

Q How has popular media influenced

the perception of the working mom?

The media has been terribly unfair to executive moms. Think about any movie or TV show that you watch, the

“working mom” is still, in 2016, code for a harried, frazzled mother who is neglecting her kids and doesn’t have it all together. It’s incredibly insulting, especially because we’re now in an era where women are actually taking a majority role in breadwinning responsibilities. I’d love to see more positive portrayals of real working mothers, real executive moms in the media, in culture. There is so much data now that suggests that it’s actually healthy and wonderful, emotionally as well as financially, for children to grow up in a household with women and mothers who have careers.

Q How can marketers reconcile the

demand to meet customers’ needs with the ever-changing loyalties of the modern purchaser?

As much as technology is changing things at a rapid pace, our values, wants, and needs as people actually aren’t that different. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is still the best guidepost. There are just many more options. We’re in a very paradoxical time; but if you first acknowledge the

As much as technology is changing things at a rapid pace, our values, wants, and needs as people actually aren’t that different.

paradoxes, you can navigate your way through them. For example, people feel bombarded with advertising and content, yet there’s a huge impetus in marketing right now to satisfy the insatiable demand for more content.

So how do you navigate your way through that? Or, how do you, as a global brand, be more global and local simultaneously?

Q How can brands integrate a sense of

humanity into their digital campaigns?

Brand voice and how we tell our stories is going to be more important than ever. Fundamentally, people want to feel connections and technology is not negating our desire to connect, it’s changing it and, in some ways, facilitating it. So, the more a brand feels like an understandable personality that consumers can identify with and relate to, the more successful it will be.

A lot of this has to do with where to have a human touch and where to intervene with technology, and how those two things interweave.

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Belinda Johnson Chief Business Affairs and Legal Officer, Airbnb

The Future of Regulation As a parent of two daughters, I think about their futures and the opportunities and the challenges that their generation is going to face. I’d love to see them enter their careers with all kinds of opportunities I might not have had. I have been incredibly fortunate to have a husband who has stayed home to care for our kids, which has given me all sorts of flexibility. More and more couples are having these conversations and these so-called “role reversals.” I’d love to see, if my daughters were to start families of their own, that this kind of thing will be not be thought of as a role reversal but just roles.

E V E R YO N E ' S A N A R M Y

Katharine Zaleski and Milena Berry Co-Founder and President and Milena Berry, Co-Founder and CEO of PowerToFly

The Future of Employment “A lot of the most innovative companies are starting to embrace flexible work arrangements and work from home policies. It’s fairly easy – embracing the right tools, adjusting your process to enforce the right amount of communication, treating employees like adults, not judging them based on face time but productivity, and just trusting people. These are the pillars that will help corporations prepare for the future that’s coming”

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Arianna Huffington Co-Founder, President, and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post

The Future of Media We are witnessing a global shift toward leadership values and abilities that are traditionally considered feminine: empathy, compassion, and collaboration. The more these qualities gain traction, the better off we’ll all be, women and men alike.

E V E R YO N E ' S A N A R M Y

Alisha Bhagat Futurist and Advisor at Forum for the Future

The Future of Childcare In our current culture, a word often associated with motherhood is “sacrifice.”

This was not always the case. I hope that, by changing the ideas around things like work and gender, we can move away from this model of sacrifice and see parenthood as a part (although an optional one) of a rich, full life. Parenting is necessary – but it should also be pleasurable.

Shazi Visram Founder and CEO of HappyFamily Brands

Jamie Zahlaway Belsito Advocacy Chair for the National Coalition for Maternal Mental Health

The Future of Food

The Future of Mental Health

Celebrating [family] moments, even though they are not typically perfect, and finding beauty in them is actually what happiness is. Recognizing that it’s not about this unobtainable perfection, it’s about celebrating what you have.

We, as a nation, put emphasis on future generations and family, but – unless we give employees adequate time off to take care of their families, and provide workers with livable wages to allow for the health and wellness of their families – we need to stop talking about how much value we put on our families and children because, right now, we’re unable to support them as a society.

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02

PARENT RELATIONS

Our Thinking As the expectations for work performance grow more intense, how will the changing needs of parents impact human capital strategies?

We’re living in a world where work is designed to feel more like home, and home feels more like work. Firms like Google or Facebook aren’t just building complexes or work environments for their employees’ own self interests. While they offer dry cleaning services, “baby bonding bucks,” free meals, on-site oil changes, haircuts, and more, there is an unspoken sense of needing to give more in return. In short, the employee experience is acutely designed to make everyone stay later, work harder, and deliver more.

On the opposite end, employers are more aware and willing to allow employees to work remotely on their “own time.” And while there are clear benefits to flexible work arrangements, there’s also this undeniable fact: work-life balance is a myth. The workday has no definite end, and neither does our insecurity from the pressures that come with it.

This environment is ready for reform. But, unlike previous examples of labor unions as drivers of change, the catalyst for more flexible and balanced work environments may come from the group with the most urgent need for change: parents.

Parents matter to fostering a viable future; they are an overwhelming part of the US population – 34.4 million families have children under the age of 18, which equates to about two-fifths of all American families, and the labor force participation rate for all mothers with children under age 18 was 69.9% in 2015. They also drive significant economic output for the global economy. And now, as millennials start becoming parents, this subgroup is beginning to demand new work benefits from employers and, as they move into childrearing roles, will be a growing force of contention.

Today, collective bargaining and labor union participation is swiftly declining, but in lieu of a national agenda

on childcare, what if the next labor movement was sparked by parents as a driving force for social change?

As Jamie Zahlaway Belsito mentioned in our conversation, the current rhetoric around the importance of family rings shallow compared to the actual legislation we have in place. Both in the public and private sector, there is an emphasis on supporting and maintaining the rights or benefits of the individual citizen or employee.

In the near future, labor organizations could shift from advocating on behalf of the individual to representing the unmet interests of families or other extended social units like long-term roommates. Employers would be required to negotiate and design remuneration and benefit packages for a social unit – however that network is redefined – instead of an individual employee.

Just like health insurance today, employees would be able to choose a lifestyle “plan” to meet the needs of their social unit beyond just pay and vacation time. As evidenced by current corporate wellness initiatives, this could lead to increased workforce happiness and participation, and drive down costs. Beyond benefits, labor unions might also emphasize the need to create workplace policies that put the emphasis on care rather than productivity.

The women we spoke to all touched on the importance of parenting, and the driving force it can become. They put forward the notion that maintaining one’s identity as a parent drives both workforce performance and political participation. Using parenting as a platform for labor reform has the potential to make the workplace better, not just for moms and dads, but also for people who are aging, single, or part of other demographics. In the following scenario, we explore the concept of social unit benefits and the risks that go along with them. In this future, companies will need to have systems to actively anticipate and respond to network changes – and, if done right, we stand to collectively benefit from this greater emphasis on care.

PA R E N T R E L AT I O N S

Mediating Parenthood

It was going to be very awkward, that was a given. Januka had already rescheduled the meeting three times and knew that if she did it again, her plan would be penalized. She was still tempted though. It was impossible to leave all of the relationship baggage at home, and she wasn’t sure if she could stomach sitting through this. She dabbed on an extra bit of mood oil as emotional armor – it was better than nothing.

For the past few months, Januka had been meticulous about sharing her lifestyle data with the National Federation of Families (NFF). Not knowing how they would analyze her needs from this data, she also kept her own notes on what she wanted. She had multiple lists of all her dream benefits on her Thotz app – and the lists were getting long. “Welcome to the life of a mom who’s raising a kid with autism,” she thought wryly. No amount of help was ever enough.

She had to admit though, the past few months have been easier thanks to the benefits she was already getting. Yes, the blow up with her partner was extremely painful and they were no longer speaking any more than they had to, but at least they reached a decision quickly: Necie would be the one to move out of their apartment, and Januka and Kaya would be left living on their own. Necie was still a great mom, but she was also now a part-time parent. It was definitely different. But luckily, right before they separated, Necie had the foresight to join the Family Union at her company. Membership included some additional costs like health insurance, and they each had to pay into a benefits program on top of it, but the impact on their lives was profound.

Given that Januka’s company, Adventia, was a top employer, they were getting so much more than just childcare support. For instance, on days that she was working in the physical lab, she was provided with a meal prep service. She’d come home to a box

filled with fresh ingredients that had already been cut and perfectly portioned. She and Kaya would cook together. It made her feel a little better on days when she wasn’t able to pick her daughter up after playschool. To qualify for these benefits, she was required to spend a minimum of 40 hours of care time with Kaya. It was strange having to meet care quotas instead of work outputs.

She looked at her dream benefits list again: “Autonomous Bus Service (for my commute and to drop Kaya off at her early childhood learning program – must have smart car seats and an on-bus community care coordinator), Puppy Rental on Tuesdays (only day we have time for a routine activity), Activity Matching (for Kaya’s play needs), Child Travel Plan (ability to travel with Kaya on the rare business trip to a hotel with caregivers who are trusted in supporting kids with severe autism).” Her notes went on and on.

But all of these things would be icing on the cake.

The cherry on top. At the end of the conversation, she knew she wanted to keep one primary benefit: unlimited Family Care days. This was critical.

So here she was now, ready to sit across from Necie and negotiate. Who got which benefit, and who paid for it. In most cases, you could just work this out online, but NFF assigned them a Support Champion because of the contentious breakup. She knew they’d both make out ok, but couldn’t help but feel like someone would leave as the victor. She really hoped it would be her.

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03

Virtual Firsts

Digital etiquette – or a lack thereof – is influencing the way kids grow up, including how they think about their first sexual experiences.

Rethinking traditional notions of technology, education, and parenting offers the possibility to reset expectations for girls and boys. What if digital innovation was used as a way to create more positive realities?

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The Future of Sex

CINDY GALLOP Cindy Gallop is the founder of Make Love Not Porn, and the founder and former chair of the US branch of advertising firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty. Her TEDTalk, "Make Love Not Porn," was one of the "most talked about presentations" at the 2009 TED conference.

According to her Twitter bio, Cindy Gallop likes to “blow shit up,” and right now, she’s blowing up what it means to have “good sex.” Today, our definitions are often influenced by what’s represented in pornography, and only portrays and benefits a specific subset of people. “Good” isn’t the same for everyone; and, according to Cindy, the definition needs to be expanded to better reflect real life circumstances. It’s not about being anti-porn, it’s about reevaluating expectations by portraying the many different ways real world sex can be good.

VR, virtual porn, and sex toys. It is way more difficult to engage with what my team is doing on the software side. We are using technology to bring people closer together in the real world. I want to help every sextech entrepreneur out there because the solution is not to shut it down or repress it. It's to open up.

The explosive growth in extreme violent porn is not driven by evil, twisted, vicious people working in the porn industry, it’s not driven by humans becoming more depraved and corrupt. It’s driven by a bunch of guys scared shitless that they’re not making any money. It’s the same as reality TV. This is why what I’m doing is important. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a business is a good guy with a better business.

Q How is the culture of Silicon Valley

Q What is the mission of Make Love

Not Porn?

We are building a whole new category on the internet that does not exist – social sex. I conceived of this entirely deliberately because our mission is one thing and one thing only: To help make it easier for people to talk about sex, openly and honestly, in the real world. The issue isn’t porn, the issue is the fact that we don’t talk about sex.

Our tagline is “Pro-sex, pro-porn, proknowing the difference.”

Jon Evans wrote a great post about this on TechCrunch last year, which was one of the best summations of what we’re doing. He said that the tech world has divided itself into two

separate groups: porn and non sexual content. He explained that there’s a huge gap in between, and that’s where Make Love Not Porn is; we are sexual content that isn’t porn. But because we’re so fucked up about sex, people think, “Oh it’s sex, then it must be porn.” The huge mistake that the tech and business world make is that anything to do with sex is porn.

Q How would you say your future

of sex might be different from other people who are trying to reinvent the future of sex?

When media and tech blogs and publications bring themselves to write about sextech, they default to the hardware. It’s easier to write about

shaping our notions of sex, relationships, and dating?

At the top of the tech world, like at the top of every other industry, are white guys talking to white guys.

When you have a world with all-male founding teams, with all-male tech teams, getting funded by all-male VC teams, you get all-male advisory boards. The dominant unicorns, the successful tech ventures, all have an entirely male-centric world view.

And, when you have a male-centric world view at a huge scale, that fundamentally changes human attitudes and behavior.

I normally say to men: we live in a world where the default setting is always male. Men, you have no idea

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Because we don’t talk about sex in the real world, we have no socially acceptable vocabulary with which to do so.

how much happier you would be living and working in a world that was equally designed by women as much as men. This is one of the reasons I have an issue with the term “feminist porn” or “porn for women” – it implies that men will not enjoy it. But they will. Women challenge the status quo because we are never it. The most innovative, disruptive things will come for women, and men will bloody love them.

our videos completely differently.

We’re doing that because we want you to take this language and use it beyond our platform in the real world. It’s language you can use to talk about what you want to do in bed in a celebratory, positive, and gender equal way.

Q How is the conversation around sex

and porn changing?

One of our members, a young man, summed up what Make Love Not Porn is about beautifully: “Watching porn makes me want to jerk off, while watching your videos makes me want to have sex.” We, like any other social platform, are about connecting people.

We’re opening up the dialogue around sex to get to better sex, to get to better relationships, to get to better lives. We are using technology to bring people closer together in the real world.

That’s the part of sex that, ironically, nobody wants to talk about.

We are observing social issues and addressing social agendas that nobody else is. Our entire mission is to make it easier to talk about sex. Because we don’t talk about sex in the real world, we have no socially acceptable vocabulary with which to do so. The language of porn has rushed in to fill that gap. And that is not good on a number of levels, but as you would expect in a male-dominated industry, the language of porn is predominantly male generated. Pounding, banging, slamming, wrecking – all terms thought up by someone who does not have the soft internal tissue to which those things are being done. At Make Love Not Porn, we are building a new language for real-world sex. We tag

Q We’re talking a lot about sex. Sex

goes hand in hand with the notion of relationships. How do you see the future of human relationships evolving?

Q What is the role of parenting in this

type of future?

My startups are real-life manifestations of my own philosophies. One of my philosophies is that everything in life starts with you and your values. So

one question I regularly ask people is: what are your sexual values? Nobody can ever tell me, because we are not brought up to think that way.

Many of us, if we’re fortunate, are born into families and environments where our parents bring us up to have good manners, a work ethic, a sense of responsibility, accountability. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed, but they should. What I say to parents all the time is that it starts in the home and it cannot start too early.

This is why I want to raise funding for Make Love Not Porn – we want to build out the Khan Academy of sex education, because right now, nobody goes into sex ed to make money, and I would like to change that.

Q If you had access to the funding you

need, what is the future you would be looking to create?

We would achieve world peace. I’m not kidding. When we are more open and honest about sex, when we are able to freely be sexual beings and use owning our sexuality to engage with each other, we will be one step closer to world peace. The world will be a happier place accordingly.

V I R TA L F I R S T S

The Future of Girlhood Nancy Jo Sales wants to “live in a world where girls feel respected, where they don’t feel pressured to have sex with someone that they don’t want to, or reveal their naked bodies on the internet in order to be popular.” A future where young women “are free to have the time and space to think and daydream… without the constant tether of social media.” In her latest book, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, and during our conversation with her, Nancy Jo presents a bleak view on the current state of girlhood – one in which the “prevalence of social media conflated with the sexualization of girls in our culture has created a public health issue.”

NANCY JO SALES Nancy Jo Sales is an awardwinning journalist and New York Times best-selling author who has written for Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and many other publications. Her latest book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers is an investigation into how social media has changed the lives of girls and presented them with unprecedented challenges.

Today, you can’t truly understand the experience of being a girl without also unpacking what it means to grow up on social media. According to Pew Research Center, in 2015, 88% of American teens aged 13-17 had access to a mobile phone, 92% went online from a mobile device daily, and teenage girls used social media sites more often than boys. The rise of personalization and technology typically negates the idea of a universal experience, however, social media is creating a “similarity of girls’ experiences regardless of their race or background” and a series of conditions that pervade across this demographic, such as new expectations for sex and a lack of social etiquette in the digital sphere.

impact on girls versus boys. Nancy Jo believes that “social media encourages a toxic environment of comparison,” especially for young women.

Michael Harris, quoted in American Girls, has found that “girls are asked to compare themselves in ways that boys just aren’t.” As social media continues to thrive on a visual-based selfie culture, it’s giving rise to the over-quantification of looks, and girls are judged on their appearance by tangible feedback – likes, retweets, follows, and shares. One girl Nancy Jo spoke to, eighteen-year-old Rachel, believes that women are rewarded for “Photoshopping [their] actual self ” into girls who are more beautiful, likable, or “hotter” than their real selves.

And, while social media might be the great equalizer for young women, it’s far from equitable if you look at its

Social media has created a system where it’s considered normal and common for boys to rate girls. This

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creates a feedback loop, where girls are engaging in more extreme behavior because they want to be differentiated from their peers by being rated higher and earning more likes.

The power dynamics in this system are clear. Social media is becoming a space where “sexual interaction between girls and boys on screens is largely controlled by boys,” Nancy Jo points out, though she feels this shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Silicon Valley is “a male dominated culture” and “the most popular sites that girls are using have been created not only by men, but actual frat boys.”

Beyond setting unrealistic social expectations for young women, Nancy Jo believes that “[social media],

interact with socially as real-life versions of porn stars. Another one of Nancy Jo’s interviewees, 16-yearold Zoe, says that “guys look at [nude photos] like a different kind of porn, almost. It’s self-generated porn.” But to Zoe and other young women, sharing sexual content is talked about by their peers as being “NBD” (“no big deal”), thus increasing the pressure to participate.

These pressures come under the guise of “hookup culture,” and some may liken this trend to the heightened sexual experimentation that simply comes along with youth. But sex educator Beth Kaper, who was also interviewed in American Girls, thinks otherwise: “Social media as it’s used is encouraging very sexual behavior

grow into women, at which point their pleasure has long since stopped being a priority. To delve deeper into this issue, Nancy Jo draws on a 2013 study by researchers at the Kinsey Institute and Binghamton University: “The double standard in hookup culture is really apparent when it comes to orgasms… women were twice as likely to have orgasms in the context of serious relationships than in casual encounters.” Perhaps sex is more accessible to young men and women than ever before, but Nancy Jo begs the question: Does simply offering access to sex make for better, healthier notions of sex and self, especially for girls?

At the end of our conversation, when we asked Nancy Jo what she finds to

Social media encourages a toxic environment of comparison.

combined with a pervasive sexualization of girls in the wider culture, is an overarching trend which is already having serious consequences.” Social platforms are impacting girls’ and boys’ views of sex and, combined with porn culture, act as a new and problematic version of sexual education.

Some studies cite that kids, on average, see their first pornographic content at a young age, often earlier than middle school. It’s not uncommon for porn to function as an alternative form of sexual education for youth culture – a medium to learn how to talk about sex, what to expect during sex, and how to define sexual preferences. But Nancy Jo is quick to differentiate: “Being sex positive and porn positive aren’t the same thing.”

This emphasis on porn culture is driving boys to equate the girls they

at a very young age. And they’re not learning to be intimate in any other way than a sexual way. They think intimacy is sex.”

Girls are led to believe that it’s “uncool” or too much to ask for a real relationship beyond just physical interactions. During Nancy Jo’s conversations with girls, they often “asked [her] about what’s happening to intimacy, what’s happening to love, what’s happening to romance.” One girl even asked what it was like to go on a date and to have somebody want to get to know you. Social media and the expectations of youth culture have accelerated everything and changed sexual experience to be less intimate and less incremental.

This notion of hookup culture isn’t just impacting adolescents during girlhood – it’s affecting them as they

be the most troubling aspect of her research, she said it was “the amount of resignation that girls express and feel about the way things are.” But how can this disheartening conversation be changed? Nancy Jo believes that we need to move beyond technological notions of progress to redefine the human experience, especially for underserved groups like young women.

“Why is misogyny and sexism inevitable?” she asks. “Why is the loss of childhood inevitable? The wonderful thing about human beings is that we can create our reality. We create our culture. We can create whatever we want it to be. One of the problems here is that we’re not being responsible about what is happening to girls.

We’re not listening to them… We can do whatever we want with social media.

What I would hope is that we change culture for the better.”

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Why is the loss of childhood inevitable?

The wonderful thing about human beings is that we can create our reality.

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The Future of Gender The ways in which a person experiences and expresses their own identity are always shifting. With maturity, experience, and time, each person journeys to discover who they are and how they present themselves to the world. Jen Richards, an advocate focusing on racial and gender justice, looks at what happens when the person who is taking that journey does not fit into the traditional definitions of gender. How is that person’s experience of self expression different, and how will it change in the future as technologies, both social and medical, continue to develop?

Q How might the experience of a

10-year-old trans youth be different by 2030 than it is today?

JEN RICHARDS Jen Richards is a writer and actress, as well as a consultant and advocate focusing on nonprofit management and gender and racial justice. She works with both national organizations and media outlets, and is the co-writer/star/producer of Her Story, a frequent guest on BuzzFeed Videos, and was a series regular on season one of I Am Cait.

It’s fun to think about what it will be like for trans youth. It’s amazing how often I can go into bookstores now and see trans people in books and magazines, as well as on TV. The visibility came so quickly – more quickly and so much bigger than any of us anticipated. There is a whole generation of trans kids today who will grow up with that just being normal.

But at the same time, there are kids growing up in places like North Carolina where there’s a state legislation entirely based on a fear around what trans youth are, and that must be horrifying for them. I think a lot of that will settle out in the next 15 years. Of course, hatred won’t be entirely gone, but, given the pace at which gay and lesbian acceptance has been in focus

for the past few years, I think trans people will experience the same thing.

Hopefully, trans acceptance in 15 years will look a lot like gay and lesbian acceptance today. We’ll be accustomed to being represented in the media, having pride parades, and just being acknowledged as a part of society.

Q How do you envision the experi ence of a transgender individual in the media might be different by 2030?

It is going to be massively different, particularly as more and more trans people are speaking in their own voices. There’s an interesting shift happening right now in Hollywood, where it’s becoming less acceptable to have cisgender actors playing trans roles.

There’s a sense now that those parts really should be going to trans people.

We’ll inevitably have our first “Will and Grace moment” – there will be a

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popular sitcom that will have a major character who’s trans, and it will be a light, accessible, funny sitcom that will bring trans people into the living rooms of millions who would otherwise never really think about it. It is really hard to overstate what kind of impact that could have.

Q What do you see for the future of

the gender binary?

My friends and I are the last of the dinosaurs – our gender still adheres to the binary of male or female. Most of my friends transitioned from one gender to a very traditional place on the other side of the spectrum, so they’re still binary identified. They’re men or women, and most of them are heterosexual, too. So something that seems so revolutionary and subversive isn’t always so. Someone can move from one box to the other box, but it doesn’t challenge the fact that there are still only two boxes.

A lot of work in trans activism is allowing the transition to happen more easily, and accepting that a person can move from one box to the other. But younger trans individuals, especially those under 25, are just destroying the boxes altogether. The traditional binary of gender is being completely disrupted and they have so much new terminology. It’s an incredible space for self-expression. What is often considered the future of gender seems to already be happening with the younger generations.

Q Can you see a world where humans

work towards creating new types of sex organs?

Although this isn’t something I’ve thought much about, I can absolutely see that happening. Gender is becoming art. It’s becoming play. And once that happens, it becomes open to all kinds of interruptions and innovations, whether it’s artistic, or ethical, or technological. As gender becomes something that is almost akin to fashion – which is grounded in a physical

Gender is becoming art. It’s becoming play. And once that happens, it becomes open to all kinds of interruptions and innovations, whether it’s artistic, or ethical, or technological.

reality but is also a place of art and commerce – all kinds of opportunities open up.

Q What types of technologies do you

see emerging that might help individuals determine gender for themselves?

The two big technologies that have already completely reshaped the trans experience are medical technologies and social media. Medical technologies, such as advancements in endocrinology and hormonal therapy as well as surgical interventions and reshaping the body, have allowed a lot of people to attain the body that they desire, the body that matches their sense of self. And that’s tremendous.

When I was younger, what I knew about the trans experience was very specific and based on a distinct, single narrative. In the past few years, social media has completely transformed the trans community and, through that, it has given us access to so many different kinds of narratives around what it means to be trans – so it opens up the experience. It allows people to say, “Hey, my experience is just as valid.”

It allows more people to come into the community and reduces feelings of shame.

Q Besides social media, what kinds of

online spaces might impact notions of gender?

I am not involved in any kind of gaming, but a lot of people are and I've heard a lot of trans people talk about

the first space that they felt comfortable playing with gender was in online worlds, where they could adopt a character of the opposite gender. It gave them a way to imagine themselves as something else. That is a really common story. I can see that becoming an increasing avenue for people to discover their own sense of gender.

Q What sort of beliefs around gender

today support or conflict with your aspirational view for the future of humanity?

The most obvious one that greatly conflicts is the belief that women are inherently worth less than men. And that, for me, is a far bigger, more pervasive, and more damaging concern than the specific place of trans people within the larger gender spectrum. Violence against women is a huge, global issue and it manifests in a variety of ways – interpersonal, governmental, medical, or with unequal pay. And this needs to be addressed before all else.

I’m always going to be working toward improving trans rights, but when I’m moving through the world, the issues I confront on a daily basis have less to do with being trans and more to do with being female. Until we address this, there’s no room for gender exploration and play and all the other things we talk about. My concern is that, as of right now, half the globe’s population is still brutally penalized because of their gender and the way that gender is based in our physical reality.

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Debbie Sterling Founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, construction toys that get girls building

The Future of Play What I’m trying to do is redefine what girlhood means in terms of play. Today in 2016, if you go into a toy store, it looks like girlhood is all about beauty, fashion, and being a princess. By 2040, I think the pop cultured definition of girlhood will encapsulate all of the multifaceted interests that girls actually have, such as athletics, building, and STEM.

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Elizabeth Merritt Vice President, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums

The Future of Museums As more and more people augment their senses — vision, hearing, touch — how will that change how humanity experiences traditional visual and performance art? How will artists, and museums, adapt to audiences that experience the world in ways formerly outside the spectrum of human ability? As with any world-changing trend, one of the roles for museums today is to introduce new concepts to people, help them explore new technologies in a safe, trusted environment, and foster hard discussions about how societal norms should change over time.

Natalie Ebel Director of Marketing at Pencils of Promise, a nonprofit providing quality education in the developing world

The Future of Education Technology is perhaps the most critical factor in maintaining a true feeling of compassion and really wanting to make a difference, as it can establish an even greater connection between a person and a cause.

Virtual reality and other technologies can have an incredibly deep impact that not only compels people to feel, but also to act. At the moment, VR is the only medium where you can fully immerse yourself in another world, which forces us to become connected, more human, and more empathetic.

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Tara Hunt Marketing executive at Truly Social Inc., and an author, speaker, and startup founder

The Future of Social Media We’re human beings connected on these apps and technology is definitely changing our behaviors, our approach to the world, and our expectations. But it’s not about technology, it’s about how it connects us.

Visual media is a lot more intimate in a lot of ways and helps connect us more deeply.

Jess Weiner CEO of Talk to Jess, a consulting and strategy firm that seeks to change brands' messaging toward women and girls

The Future of Influence Not every brand, not every business, is designed to take on a direct conversation with women and girls. You have to come from a place where you’re really ready to do the work and make the change, or I say: just don’t do it. There’s nothing worse than an empty, zero calorie message for women. We smell it, we’re very savvy.

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Dalal Khajah, Annie Pariseau, Josephine Wai Lin Co-Founder and CCO, Director of Hustle, Co-Founder and CEO of ManServants

The Future of Dating When industries are redesigned for women, we’ll find more initiatives “for good.” As a trend, we’re seeing the rise of the single, independent woman.

Marrying later in life means she has more time to figure out what she wants – and we will be demanding a higher standard of men before commitment.

Men being caring, supportive, and putting a woman’s happiness above his own once in a while shouldn’t be unrealistic, it should be the norm.

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Our Thinking

How can we use technology to create a safe environment for children to experiment with different aspects of adulthood, even topics like relationships and sexuality?

Part of being a kid is practicing for your future as an adult. It’s about figuring out who you want to be when you “grow up,” defining your dream job, or sussing out what it means to be a woman.

For the generations who grew up without social media, their experimentation with womanhood consisted of make-believe and dress up. They had time to invent and live in their own worlds.

Today, girls (and boys) still spend time in a make-believe adulthood, but the worlds they live in are predefined. And, because the technology they use is designed by and for adults, their access to modern spaces for self-discovery is severely limited.

The content that girls and boys rely on for self-reflection, education, and experimentation set unrealistic examples of expectations for adulthood. For instance, basing your sexual expectations on porn culture leaves out a significant narrative around what it means to have sex. Selfhood is being defined by the feedback mechanisms embedded in digital culture. Girls have gone from playing house to crowdsourcing their sexuality.

“Am I pretty?” videos are just one example of the ways in which young women are leveraging platforms like YouTube, asking strangers to validate their appearance and help them understand themselves. These platforms and devices, as well as the structures that support them, don't take into account the inquisitive nature and needs of pre-teens and teenagers. By providing more realistic notions of how ideas like sexual exploration might feel for both girls and boys, and expanding the spectrum of what qualifies as “normal” behavior, we

have the potential to not just reframe expectations for sex, but also revalue the idea of intimacy and build a culture of empathy.

In our interviews, we repeatedly heard that the vast majority of technology – especially social media and porn ­platforms – has been designed by men, for men.

We wondered, what if new technologies and content distribution platforms were designed to celebrate girlhood and boyhood and address the very real questions that teens have? Imagine virtual reality technology being leveraged as a tool for informal, self-guided sexual education for young people of all genders. Instead of offering teens predetermined, limited notions of adulthood that are hinged on models of comparison, girls and boys would be offered blank slates to experiment and create their own preferred futures. What if they were challenged to define a set of personal values, and experience how their intended actions might impact others?

By changing the ways in which teens can access experiences of maturity and adulthood, the better prepared they can be for real life experiences. For the following scenario, we explore the ways in which a young girl might tackle matters of body insecurities and sexuality in a safe environment that she can traverse at her own pace. As Nancy Jo Sales says, “the wonderful thing about human beings is that we can create our reality” – and this includes a virtual world that allows for the type of experimentation and self-education that bridges the gap between pretty princesses and fully-fledged adults.

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Simulated Expectations

Manuela felt so nervous, she thought she might be sick. Her greatest fear was just confirmed: she was assigned to yoga for the entire semester.

This was going to be her first real seventh grade gym class. She always managed to replace the “Get Fit!” requirement with other electives that gave her skills that were actually useful. Most of her classes were virtual,

Yoga meant changing in the girl’s locker room into tight pants and a sports bra. She Googled the people in her class and her heart sank. Even though she had never met them, she imagined that half of them were already wearing thongs to school. Manuela didn’t even own a thong. The idea of having to change into a sports bra in front of the other girls made her feel so exposed. Her breasts were larger. Would they notice the stretch marks on them? Or the size of her nipples? Or their color? She looked in the mirror. Her legs were shaved, but a line of hair was visible from her belly button down. She worried about her lower back too – would they notice? As one of the only Latinas in the area, she figured something on her body would stand out.

Doing the only thing she could think of to feel better, Manuela added a question to her school district’s Ask.us page as an anonymous user: “How can I feel more comfortable being naked around other people before gym class?” Within a few hours, she got an alert: “New Upload: Dare to Bare.”

As she tightened her Oculus headset and changed worlds, Manuela knew what to expect.

These life preps were all kind of the same. They started with a situation teens would find themselves in, and she would be guided through the participation. She wondered who put these programs together. They must be really smart.

Manuela walked into a virtual locker room, and stood with a group of girls her age. She knew they weren’t actually there, but it felt so real, she couldn’t keep her heart from racing. “Hi!” a pretty brunette girl said. “I’m Savannah. Are you excited for class?”

Manuela nodded, but hesitated as she watched the others start to change. The brunette girl took her t-shirt off, and Manuela couldn’t help but stare at her back, her shoulders just a little bit visible through her hair. It was covered in small red dots, but Manuela still thought she looked quite pretty.

Looking around the room, she noticed that no one else looked totally airbrushed either – there was a scar here, some cellulite there, maybe some extra hair – and it made her feel comfortable enough to start undressing too.

But Manuela hesitated as she bent down to untie her shoes, suddenly very aware of the rolls her stomach would make. No one else seemed bothered with theirs though – everyone, even the skinniest people, had some. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. She wasn’t completely happy with how she felt yet, so she repeated the simulation over and over again for the rest of the afternoon.

On the first day of yoga class, in the locker room, Manuela didn’t hesitate to start changing. It really felt like she had done this before. Feeling pretty comfortable, she looked over at the girl next to her and said, “Your bra is so cute. Where did you get it?”

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04

Reverse Trace Design

We are inhabiting the anthropocene, a geological period in which humans drive environmental impact. After years of new and better technology designed to conquer nature and manifest man’s greatness, resource scarcity and extreme weather patterns are creating a need for new design paradigms on all scales. What if good design, experience, or technology was measured by how much it reversed human impact or the status quo?

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The Future of Identity The future of identity is a dense and vast topic, one often reduced to focus on the individual. But for Amina Wadud – a renowned professor, international authority on Islam, and proponent of gender equality – the concept at hand is not simply identity, but also the systems on which we rely daily that impact our definitions of ourselves and our relation to others. For Amina, in order to imagine a new future, we need to start at a systems level and dismantle structures that have become obsolete – patriarchy, male-centric religion, and capitalism included – and build new infrastructures from a clean slate.

Q What sort of systems need to

change in order to achieve a more inclusive future?

DR. AMINA WADUD Dr. Amina Wadud is Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies and Visiting Scholar at the Starr King School for the Ministry. As an international consultant on Islam and gender and a public intellectual, she serves on the International Advisory Group for www.musawah.org (a global reform movement) and is part of the Arcus Foundation Islam Advisory Group.

Since conducting a historic mixed gender Friday Prayer in 2005, she has become best known as the “Lady Imam.”

Patriarchy served a purpose when we lived as human beings on planet earth in constrained circumstances, not able to control our environment. We emphasized a modality of conquer and control. That was necessary for us to be able to negotiate with our environment, and do things like build houses and cars and airplanes and whatever.

But that, “over paradigm” of patriarchy is moving towards being obsolete.

It’s not sustainable, and the environmental crisis with the planet is one of the indications. For the future, the shift away from patriarchy is necessary for the survival of the planet.

We also need to remove individuality from being seen as something that’s competitive, and instead make

it a thing of cooperation, reciprocity, compassion, and mutual interdependence. That is the way to move outside of patriarchy, because patriarchy requires someone to be in a position of power over – better than – someone else. Until we understand that we are all other to someone else’s other, we’re going to continue to replicate that power dynamic, and I believe that this replication is counterproductive to the survival of human beings on this planet.

Q What do you think about identity in

the workplace or the ways in which we are identified by the capitalist structure and the work we have to do? How does this work with or against your vision of the future?

I don’t see the capitalist model as sustainable because it depends ethically on notions of greed and acquisition.

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We have created a system that’s built upon having money, but that system itself is a choice. It’s not a necessity.

A good place to watch how this plays out is with the ultra rich. These people have achieved the goal of capitalism, and then realized there’s nowhere else to go, so they end up going back and giving back to the whole planet.

I don’t see that money either, paper, coin, or digital, is truly the measure of the meaning of being a human. Unfortunately, the capitalist system is completely based on that.

Eventually, when we understand that natural resources – clean water, air, soil, the harvest – have to be shared and are the only resources that we need to survive, we’ll understand that we don’t need money to survive. But we have built a system that requires us to have money in order to get access to those resources, so money has become the only thing we need to survive – and that’s a despicable system that I find that unsustainable.

I don’t have enough of a background in economics to envision the science of the steps of going beyond capitalism, except by watching the ultra rich come to the completion of the acquisition level and have nothing left to do but engage in the return level. And that shows that there’s a limit.

We have created a system that’s built upon having money, but that system itself is a choice. It’s not a necessity.

I’ve seen these systems be exclusive communities of people who have a certain amount of [wealth and status], and therefore, on the basis of what they have, they can opt out of full participation in some of the areas of the overall economic system. They can afford not to be in the paying system.

Q In closing, what other points that we might not have

covered do you think need to be touched on in a discussion about the future of identity?

This gives me a chance to discuss what is obviously my own area of interest, and that is this: we need a vision of the Holy, the Sacred, or God. We need a vision that nurtures our capacity to go beyond the boundaries of our own identities now, so that our identities actually are expanded toward a greater potential that we have as human beings.

So I do see a relationship with the creator as part of what is our individuality, and, therefore, as part of the projection of what I see for the future.

Q Have you seen any emerging trends or signals that

indicate people attempting to move away from our current system?

The way most people think about religion – including the very religious – is that they see the system itself as being eternal. And I don’t see the system as being eternal; I see the system as being a facility toward what is eternal. And what is eternal is an intimate relationship with the Sacred, the Other, the Creator, an intimate relationship with others, our environment (the planet), and ourselves.

Yes, I’ve seen lots of them, but unfortunately they’re all based on a kind of economic elitism. It’s like eco-friendly tourism. Eco-friendly tourism is an idea based on a respect for an intimate relationship with the environment, but they are cost-prohibitive for most people. So how can you have the one system that confirms the necessity for an intimate relationship with the environment be one in which where only the more wealthy can participate?

The ideas that we have about God now are very patriarchal and very limited. I don’t see the solution as an affirmation of the goddess, what I see is what I call a “transgender God.” We need to be able to find a god that fills a wide spectrum of gender locations, so that all persons – no matter their gender location – can not only identify, but aspire to an intimate relationship with the Holy, and therefore the transcendence of their own limits.

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The Future of Space We’re all aware of environmental issues on Earth – even if we choose to ignore them for the time being. But for Natalie Panek, a rocket scientist and engineer in MDA’s Robotics and Automation division, ignoring these issue is not an option, nor do they stop at the stratosphere.

An avid outdoors enthusiast, Natalie frequently draws on her own experiences in the natural world to help with sustainability initiatives in space. Although these two worlds can often feel unrelated, Natalie believes that long-term sustainability is dependent on viewing them as wholly interconnected.

NATALIE PANEK Natalie Panek is a rocket scientist, explorer, and a champion for women in tech. As an Engineer at MDA's Robotics and Automation division, she works on Canadian space robotics and other space exploration programs. She was featured on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in 2015.

Q We often think about sustainability

on earth, but not outside of it. What should we be more aware of when it comes to our orbits?

much out there to explore and understand, and it’s really up to each of us to think about how that matters to us and why it’s important.

The orbits around earth are getting so cluttered because we keep launching new satellites to meet our growing demand without doing anything about the ones that are still up there, broken down. Space is going to be like our oceans at some point – polluted and full of garbage. But how do you convince an entire industry to move away from making money to do something that’s important for the environment?

Q Looking at your website and social

media, you’re clearly an outdoors person. How have these experiences impacted your views on space and sustainability?

We need to move away from thinking that space is about money, because it’s really about searching for the unknown and finding what’s out there and learning. If we’re able to separate that, then we can do so many more incredible, innovative things in space. There’s so

I grew up in the Canadian Rockies.

I love adventure, and one of the leading principles you abide by in the outdoors is the “leave no trace” policy. I never really thought about my love of the outdoors and my love of space as things that can merge together, but now, I realize that it’s really one and the same. We have to be protecting the places we explore, regardless of whether it’s on Earth or in outer space. I’m really passionate about trying to take care of

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the orbital environment and being proactive about how we’re using the environments that we rely on.

Q What are the flaws in our approach

to sustainability on Earth?

We seem to, in many ways, be technologically dependent rather than technologically savvy, which is to our detriment. And we also don’t really want to take action upfront.

We choose convenience over taking responsibility for our actions, and I think that can be very risky in terms of what we’re doing to the Earth. We all want the convenience of our daily lives – driving cars, using products – but it takes its toll on the environment. This is our home, and I think we’re playing a very precarious game with the way we’re moving forward and advancing and not dealing with climate change.

Q If you were given a budget to solve

some of these challenges, what would be your focus?

100% satellite servicing. Hands down.

What if satellite manufacturers had to pay a deposit to even launch their satellite into orbit and they would get that deposit back if they deorbited their satellite or cleaned up a certain amount of space debris?

Q What about inspiring future gen erations?

One of our greatest responsibilities is encouraging and inspiring young people to work on things we know are hard. That is how we will be able to solve the most pressing problems of our time and create a sustainable future on Earth. Inspiring the next generation and providing them with the resources to tackle challenges is how we will discover innovative research, technologies, and methodologies to ensure that future generations do not bear burdens created by previous ones.

What if satellite manufacturers had to pay a deposit to even launch their satellite into orbit and they would get that deposit back if they deorbited their satellite or cleaned up a certain amount of space debris?

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The Future of Oceans The relationship between humans and their environment is not something to take lightly, but Aubrey Yee is optimistic that it will improve in the coming years. If we care for our planet, learn from the mistakes of past generations, and don’t simply rely on technology to improve our future, we can – hopefully – ensure that the world we leave for our children is one where both tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and farmers in developing countries can thrive.

AUBREY YEE Aubrey Morgan Yee is a futurist, systems thinking practitioner, writer, and photographer.

Q How might humans relate to the

ocean and other natural environments in new ways by 2030, or even 2100?

As this century progresses, we will see a heightened appreciation for the ocean and other natural environments as we continue to realize how much we rely on them and how much we have degraded them. Many members of the younger generations seem to have an almost unconscious understanding of the converging planetary crises and the environmental destruction that has resulted in impending disasters like climate change and massive species loss. This deep connection is inspiring a good number of young people to be bold and creative and to reconnect with nature. This gives me a lot of hope that our future may be one of greater connection to and greater reverence for oceans and natural environments.

There is a worldwide resurgence among indigenous peoples in all different parts of the world to reinvigorate their connection to ancestral wisdom and their relationship to the other-than-human world. I think that indigenous cultures have a lot to teach about a different way of seeing ourselves in the world, a world that is vibrant and alive with vastly different forms of life and different ways of knowing. These two developments are representative of divergent and alternative futures. What will be really interesting to see is how these two meta-trends inform each other and interact with one another.

Q How might technology play a role

in our relation to the world around us?

Rapidly emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence, synthetic biol-

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ogy, and quantum computing, are beginning to radically alter the way we understand ourselves as humans and the ways in which we relate to the natural environment. These technologies are pushing us to ask what it actually means to be human and where our connection to the “natural” world begins or ends.

Are we on our way to being – or are we already – posthuman? What happens when we begin to merge our bodies ever more deeply with technology?

Q What about the drawbacks of tech nology?

We live in a world of unevenly distributed futures. At the very same moment that a scientist and venture capitalist in Silicon Valley are attempting to design life forms, a peasant farmer in Bangladesh is struggling to survive and a child in Detroit is going hungry. The technooptimist future ignores political realities in a way that I think is dishonest and dangerous. We can’t simply innovate our way to a better future through technology. So, while technology plays a critical role in the evolution of our collective futures, we need to pay much closer attention to social and environmental justice if we want to leave our kids a world worth living in.

Q What emerging changes will most

impact the health of oceanic systems in the next 15–50 years?

The biggest challenges are pollution (plastic and otherwise), rising ocean acidity, increasing temperatures, and overfishing. Pretty overwhelming, huh? The converging trends do not look good for future ocean health, and we need to do some serious retooling of our systems and practices, quickly. If we are able to take a step back and look at the way humanity operates from a 10,000 ft. perspective, the whole project of modernity and our notions of what constitutes progress suddenly take new shape.

how might the global supply chain and production systems shift?

Imagine this: in 1939, Fred Jones and Joe Numero patented the first refrigerated truck, and in 1956 an American named Malcolm McLean invented the shipping container. These two inventions transformed the way we move products around the world. I’ve grown up in a world where I expect strawberries to be available to me in the dead of winter. We have reached a point where totally illogical trade deficits are normalized. If aliens showed up today to examine our global supply system, they would probably determine that we are certifiably insane. We have created such a fragile network of dependencies that operate on paradigms that are no longer stable, like cheap oil, abundant natural resources, strong economies, and consumer demand. These historic trend lines are no longer givens in the 21st century.

Q How might evolving technology

help the supply chain?

Some of the emerging technologies and trends that I see transforming the futures of the global supply chain are 3D printing, the growth of the “maker movement,” sharing economies or trade and barter economies, localized production and distribution networks, and the reuse/upcycling movement. These kinds of disruptive capacities are going to challenge and transform the way we produce, move, and sell products in the future. With regards to waste, people are beginning to better understand the need for closed-loop systems where nothing is wasted. We will learn to minimize waste and to use waste in more creative ways.

Q Do you believe humans have a fu ture? If yes, is it a future on Earth?

I hope that humans have a future, but only if it is an inclusive and just future.

The systems we currently have in place have served to decimate the non-human Q How do you imagine humans will

world in such a short period of time. It is source and manage waste by 2030 and incredibly clear at this point that drastic

change is needed in almost every aspect of modern human life if we want to realize a future where humans and non-humans can thrive rather than merely survive.

Many people point to space as the next frontier, and while I think space exploration is exciting, unless we shift our paradigms, we will treat space the same way we have treated the Earth, and that is not my preferred future. If you look at the discourse around space exploration, it is rife with colonial references that are resonant with the discourse of early Western imperialists and explorers. We think of space as an empty canvas full of new minerals and territories to be mined and exploited for extractive industries. I think that is a totally misguided paradigm. We need to learn from the mistakes of earth bound colonization so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes as we explore beyond our planet.

Q What can we do now to ensure we

do, in fact, have a future as a species?

The most powerful are able to continue destructive behaviors and the less powerful bear the brunt of the suffering that is created. For humans to have a future, we need to reimagine power and our foundational relations to one another and to non-human life. I am hopeful that this is possible, but I also know that hope is not nearly enough. As we navigate an increasingly complex, interdependent, and unpredictable path into the future, we need to empower as many people as possible with the ability to engage in meaningful foresight. The ability to envision and imagine several generations into the future helps to keep us accountable in the present, and it simultaneously unleashes the creative capacity of the human intellect. That compassion and sense of responsibility, what Hawaiians call kuleana, should be shared by all of us. Those in positions of power must accept their kuleana to create a more just and equitable world for those who have been on the losing side of history. Our oceans and our futures depend on it.

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We can't simply innovate our way to a better future through technology.

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Madeline Stuart 18 year-old aspiring model from Brisbane, Australia with Down Syndrome

The Future of Role Models I hope we start focusing on our inner beauty, on our environment, on our health, and our wellbeing. I hope, with time, we all learn to love ourselves.

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Maree Conway Strategic Foresight Practitioner and Researcher at Thinking Futures

The Future of Corporate Planning We need to stop talking about strategic planning and start talking about strategy development and implementation. More than that, we need to be using foresight in that strategy development to ensure that the plans that do emerge from the process are robust and move organizations towards their preferred future.

Nora Khaldi Founder and CSO at Nutritas

The Future of BioTech Currently, there are a lot of companies around the world with a lot of waste and it’s not because that waste is toxic – they just don’t have the technology to look into those byproducts and add value to them. So [at Nutritas], we are using our technology to take those byproducts and determine if there are any health benefits within them. By doing that, other companies can find new uses for their own byproducts and incorporate them into our everyday diet.

This way, we are not throwing away 50% of food in the early stages. We are expecting the population to grow to 9 billion people by 2050, and we’ll have to feed all of those people, yet companies are still throwing away 50% – and that is crazy.

Cindy Frewen Dr. Cindy Frewen, FAIA, is an urban futurist and architect and teaches the Design Futures Workshop and Social Change at the University of Houston graduate program in Strategic Foresight

The Future of City Design It’s time that we integrate fulfillment and activity into our daily lives, and, in the process, make the planet breathe again. We will have decades of plight ahead, but one household, one community, one city, and one country at a time can become a blue zone. As women increasingly shape lifestyles and cities and design, we will be able to balance rationalism with care.

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Our Thinking

What if the next design movement aimed to erase the (formally) indelible mark of humans from the natural world?

Even for the staunchest of climate change deniers, it’s impossible to ignore that humans shape the world around them. In many cases, we reshape the natural to make it “better” – but only for us humans. Although we improve our world to allow the systems and models we’ve built over time to function more efficiently, our actions often harm the universal systems that existed long before the human race. Now we play god, building islands shaped like palm trees, or in some cases even creating new forms of life.

But what if the practice of design worked not just on behalf of human-centered needs, but also for the world around us? What if we designed for the intersectional needs of the various planetary species? There are already signals that point to a design movement that shifts our aesthetic and outcomes beyond the notion of sustainability; there is a push for design that doesn’t just pay homage to natural elements, but instead makes offerings back to the planet with the intention of reversing (rather than reducing) human impact.

For many designers, this isn’t just a utopian vision. Saltwater Brewery, for instance, partnered with design firm We Believers to create six pack rings that are an edible food source for marine wildlife. Projects like these aim to create a world in which humans work to improve the existence of flora and fauna rather than doing the opposite. Imagine a world in which nature was the priority – a world where designers and city planners would deeply consider the needs of plants, animals, and other microorganisms in their blueprints and product pitches.

What would this mean practically? Well, it would require a shift away from the traditional, human-centric

design paradigm to something like biophilic urbanism, moving beyond biomimicry to finding solutions that aren’t just inspired by nature but also designed with the Earth in mind – benefiting not just humans, but also the broader ecosystem. But building things like living skyscrapers that act as vertical environments for natural life, among other innovations, means longer lead times, higher upfront costs, and a host of other requirements. It means disclosing how waste and energy are used; it means looking to artists and other disciplines to inspire urban planners, architects, and others; it means new certifications; and, most critically, it means better integrating and anticipating the needs and desires of non-human stakeholders.

As Natalie Panek explains in her interview, sustainable space exploration that follows a “leave no trace policy” would allow for a more proactive, rather than reactive, relationship with our universe, allowing for the opportunity to entirely reimagine our engagement with other planets and their ecosystems. From a more base-level, paradigmatic perspective, Amina Wadud puts forward a future worldview where a major systemic shift occurs.

In this future, the human desire to dominate the environment dissipates, and that modality of control is no longer a viable way to negotiate with the planet. Both of these women, among the many others in this section, offer a new way of looking at our relationship with nature; it no longer needs to be controlled or governed, but rather accounted for, acknowledged, and recognized. It’s not a far parallel from women themselves, who have historically been in the service of others, their needs perceived as secondary, or even obsolete, in decision-making. Like women, it’s time we give nature the vote.

R E V E R S E T R AC E D E S I G N

Immigrating to the Future Welcome graduates. There are many things I could say about how I ended up as the Chief Architect at GreenSpace. But please allow me to first tell you a story about the very beginning of my journey, about my expectations, and how not having them met can be the greatest gift.

I remember when I first arrived in this city. It was weird leaving my family behind, the food I grew up with, the ramshackle farm, the smell of earth and mud, the laughter, our games, even the mess… It sounds crazy, but I had never seen a city before. I was definitely excited, but I also remember having this intense feeling of nostalgia the second I boarded the plane. In the weeks before I left, everyone kept calling me “The Future.” I thought that was weird.

To me, “the future” was a place – not a person.

better. The initial memory of getting off the plane has never escaped me. The smell was warm and rich. I could taste the sunlight – but it was somehow different. Maybe more radiant? Clearer? The airport terminal was hard to see; it blended into what looked like the most beautiful garden. As the other passengers and I got closer, I saw birds. Never in a million years did I imagine this many birds at an airport, having always thought that planes were a hazard to their migration patterns.

Growing up, we had a small collection of Lit translation tablets in our village. They moved from house to house each week. These functioned as a sort of distributed library, but access to the app store had broken pretty early on and the only videos that were downloaded were from the science fiction collection. I drank those stories in. They were strange and brought to life things outside of anything I could have imagined myself. To me, the future was shiny, ice blue, and made of steel – the antithesis of my small, rural home. They showed cities that had advanced transportation systems, stark commandeering architecture, and contraptions to make things like clean air or water. I imagined what living in a city like that would be like.

As I was taken to my new home, it was undeniable: there was something very special going on here, and I wanted to be a part of it. I had envisioned my dorm to be a high-rise, and it was. But I didn’t expect it to be covered in vertical gardens. Birds ducked in and out, and next to the entrance I saw a handful of bees gently hovering near vibrant flowers. I remember having to purposefully avoid stepping on mushrooms that seemed to be flourishing right outside the entryway. The brown mud roads of my home seemed far away – and so did the ice blue steel of my imagined city.

That’s where I thought I was heading when I boarded the plane to start my academic career here, at Tongji University. As we flew, I kept looking for the city through the airplane window. I looked for grey skyscrapers, black highways, for “traffic,” for new colors and patterns. And then, just when we were starting to land, I saw it – the greenery, the trees, the flowers – it was like an urban paradise. Nothing like what I had ever imagined. The future was lush, and verdant. Where was the metal? The ice blue? The silver?

Was I disappointed? No – I was relieved and inspired. It was like the things I had left behind, only

In that moment, I knew I wanted to be the one to think about how the birds would use my buildings as their homes and feeding grounds. I wanted to go through the tedious process of reintroducing native species in a way that benefitted us as well as the rest of the world. I wanted to defend my designs in front of inter-species councils. I wanted to build a new look for the future. And I wanted to inspire science fiction writers to speculate on a new design aesthetic.

This was the moment it all started, where my expectations of a stark, futuristic city were replaced by what I can only describe as one thing: a heightened sense of harmony to the world around me.

This is an excerpt from a commencement address by Liu Yang at Tongji University, 2098.

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Words for the Unknown Innovation practices often focus on making “things� that are bigger, better, and brighter to drive growth. But as technology fundamentally changes what it means to be human, we will increasingly need to invent new ways to talk about our everyday realities as they relate to time-old concepts like health, technology, and food. What if we focused on creating a language for change at the same time as creating the change itself? What if we more proactively shaped not just the thing, but the language and social norms around it?

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The Future of Science

RITA J. KING Rita J. King is Co-Director of Science House, a strategic consultancy in Manhattan. She is also a futurist, writer, and jewelry designer.

Rita J. King, co-director of Science House, looks forward to a time where there is more overlap between various scientific disciplines – where the rigid boundaries between physics and biology, neuroscience and chemistry are broken down, leaving space for a new Imagination Age to emerge. To usher in this era, Rita is creating a new vocabulary through the power of visuals, words, and other creative means, giving us the ability to navigate our way towards the future.

Q What are the guiding principles of

Q What is the Imagination Age?

realized that no matter what industry they were in they had the same problem: Industrial Era thinking being applied to Intelligence Era problems.

During the Industrial Era, the focus was on tangible things, and our brains became good at making sense of these tangible things. The work day started and ended. In the Intelligence Era, the work products we put out are much less tangible – code, analytics, etc. It’s a different way of thinking that’s much more immersive, and it’s very difficult for our brains to make sense of these kinds of things – it can be very unclear and overwhelming. And the workday never seems to end.

When I started working with leaders from all sorts of organizations, I

I created the Imagination Age as a transition period between the Indus-

Science House and what is your vision for the organization?

We call Science House “a cathedral for the imagination.” We apply scientific thinking to business. We believe that the future belongs to a hybrid model between science and business. Science is a process of curiosity and discovery, and businesses can scale things up, commercialize them, and get them out into the world. Our role is to make the invisible visible to promote innovation and imagination.

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trial Era and the Intelligence Era. I found that people were trying to leap straight out of one into the other, which is problematic. The Imagination Age is a navigation system for charting a dynamic path in a nebulous environment.

Q What does the future look like to you in 100 years?

100 years from now, the relationship between imagination and physical space is going to be radically different. There will be a convergence between hardware, software and bioware. We will see the effects of editing life at the cellular level as we rewrite the stories in our DNA. Right now, most of our technologies are external. What will ethics look like when tech is inside our bodies and part of us? What happens when the boundaries between internal and external break down? What it means to be an individual is going to drastically change and become far more dynamic and fluid.

As we move toward the future, we will have some very tough decisions to make. But who will make those deci-

weil may cross a threshold and at the same time, billions of people won’t even realize the threshold has been crossed.

And, given the nebulous and often hidden nature of technology, people just won’t see most of what’s happening.

The singularity isn’t an obvious, visible thing. It’s possible that only a small handful of people will really understand how far we’ve gone.

Q What kind of potential future do you see for AI and

nanotechnology?

The way we think about AI right now is very humancentric. But there are going to be different types of intelligence and awarenesses in the future, including many that we can’t yet fully imagine. We want to measure intelligence against our ideas about what it means to be human. We tend to ask: "Will any AI ever be as smart as a person?” But that’s not the right question. At some point in the future, a super-intelligence may have the ability to control matter

The way we think about AI right now is a robot who thinks like a person, it’s very human-centric. But there are going to be different types of intelligence and awarenesses in the future.

sions? Our ethics are a living thing; they are often reactionary and constantly changing. But a lot of our laws and perceptions and behavioral norms are based on outdated ideas. We haven’t come to terms yet with the implications of the future.

Privacy is one example. It’s a relatively new construct. I would argue that the last vestige of privacy we have are the thoughts in our own heads. But how long is that going to last? We’re already in an age where analytics are revealing things about us, and we don’t always know what’s being revealed. We are also more predictable than we think we are.

Q What are your thoughts on concepts like the singularity?

I see the singularity less as a threshold and more as an evolution that is already in motion and will continue to gain momentum, but I don’t think it will impact everyone equally. It’s entirely possible that someone like Ray Kurz-

at the atomic level. This idea is not that far-fetched; we’re on the cusp of many different technologies maturing in tandem, and the unexpected impacts of the combinations are going to be revolutionary.

At the same time, we’re starting to understand the human brain on a much more granular level, though it remains very mysterious. I don’t believe that if you understand the brain at the granular level, you can recreate the symphony that is human perceptions of life, but I do believe that you can capture a lot of it and create an intelligence that has some aspects of how our brain works. I’m very excited by the overlap between physics and biology, neuroscience and chemistry. A hybrid perspective allows us to get more flexible with our science. Right now, our institutional approach and investments in science are quite safe. Private investors, in some cases, are willing to take more risks. In the future, we will see more breakthrough projects, and more information being shared.

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The Future of Women's Health Dr. Gillian Einstein, who specializes in cognitive neuroscience and women’s health, is familiar with developing new models for describing her ideas – but what about reframing our vocabularies to give new meaning to concepts we think we already know, like menstruation? What if we start thinking of women’s monthly cycles in terms of physical pain, rather than mood? Gillian is an advocate for a more inclusive approach to medicine, one that involves women and other XX subjects during research.

Q What is your role in creating the

future of neuroscience?

DR. GILLIAN EINSTEIN Dr. Gillian Einstein is a faculty member in the Departments of Psychology and Public Health Sciences, Senior Scientist at Women's College Research Institute, Mentor for the Health Care Technology and Place program, and Director of the new Collaborative Program in Women's Health at the University of Toronto.

My role is about bringing more women into neuroscience, and bringing a different kind of thinking to the research. I wrote a chapter called "Situated Neuroscience" about the kind of neuroscience that I think needs to be done. It’s a contextualized neuroscience that isn't about looking at the brain in a vacuum, but rather about the whole nervous system as part of the body, its relationship to other body systems, and also to the environment.

Q How did you create the term “situ ated neuroscience”?

In science studies, there is a very famous scholar named Donna Haraway. She has written books about cyborgs and things like that. She has

a very important paper called “Situated Knowledges.” So, I took the term “situated neuroscience” from her, and it came out of work I was doing with the Somali community and about how the tradition of female genital cutting needed to be thought about much more in context – both for its effect on the nervous system and also for its societal effects. Then I realized that is important for just about anything you study with the body.

Q How do you view the relationship

of the brain to the body?

When there’s a cognitive change, how is it related to the rest of the body?

How is it not just the brain that influences the rest of the body, but – when you study the endocrine system – how does the rest of body influence the brain? I’m don’t think of the brain

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as the CEO of the body; I think of the brain as a part of one larger body system that is interacting. If you cut one part of the body, the entire body becomes involved through the nervous system. I think about a corporeal body, which includes the brain, but also includes the interaction of that body with other bodies, as well as the environment.

Q You’ve done work around menstru ation and PMS. Based on your findings, how might we change the way we think about women and mood in the next 20 years?

It’s a gendered assumption that what’s important with hormones is mood. Studying a map of the menstrual cycle could be really important.

We should stop focusing on women and mood and hormones. If we want to ask a question about menstruation, why don’t we just ask a question about pain, about cramps, about physical locations?

Do you have cramps? Do you hurt?

You feel different parts of your body at different stages of the menstrual cycle that you don't feel at other parts of the menstrual cycle. Some women report feeling ovulation. But we don’t have a lot of [research] on it. It needs to be a discussion about embodiment and how the nervous system actually plays a really important role in both a social science perspective and also from a neuroscience perspective.

Q What can healthcare learn from

women’s bodies that would be applicable to other practices in the field?

One of the things that women’s biologies can teach biomedicine is in the area of chronic conditions. The biomedical system is roughly set up for acute problems – you have a heart attack, you get a coronary bypass procedure or a heart transplant. But as we’re more successful with acute problems, like a diagnosis of cancer, the treatment actually leads to a chronic problem. What's interesting about women's biologies, if you look at biomedical reports, is that women tend to bear the burden of chronic disease. We bear the burden of heart conditions in old age, we bear the burden of fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions, we bear the burden of autoimmune disorders. So by studying these chronic conditions in women, which have been relatively under-studied until now, they may help us think about chronic conditions within the healthcare system.

Q How do you see the discipline of

neuroscience changing in the next 20 years?

People will be a lot more interested in some areas like stress, and a lot more interested in what other body systems are contributing to the changes in the brain that they see. When people study stress, for example, they are looking at the brain, seeing cognitive

changes, or they are seeing changes in areas that are important for different types of cognition. But they are thinking about what's happening in the adrenal glands, in which hormones are being secreted systemically, and how that’s having an impact on the gonads, and how that’s, in turn, having an impact on the brain. And that will be happening more and more.

Q What do you think medicine would

look like if it became more femalecentric?

The male first became the model, and now we say we shouldn't be studying females because they are more complicated. But I think if we start it off with a female as the model, we look at the male system and say it’s too simple. And then on top of that, I don't think males are as simple as we thought they were.

We need new measures for gender, we need new algorithms that really take complexity and intersectionalities into account. So I think the models are going to change. It's going to give birth to innovation. I am very hopeful for what's ahead, because – with the study of sex differences, with the inclusion of women in science, with a better understanding of disease and conditions that are more common in women – we’re going to learn more about everybody.

We need new measures for gender, we need new algorithms that really take complexity and intersectionalities into account. So I think the models are going to change. It's going to give birth to innovation.

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The Future of Agriculture

SARA MENKER Sara Menker is the founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence which provides users with actionable agricultural data to drive higher productivity and greater access to capital. Prior to founding Gro Intelligence, Sara was a vice president in Morgan Stanley’s commodities group.

Without a cohesive vocabulary for change, innovation becomes more even more challenging.

Take agriculture, for example, a field that – to most of us – is a completely abstract concept. We may understand the very basics, but everyone talks about food and farming in different ways. There’s the industrial lingo, the marketing jargon, and the language of the consumers. But for an industry that impacts our daily lives at such a basic level, there is no common terminology that can drive crossindustry innovation or change – rendering much of the legwork that’s been done to make data about this industry more accessible ultimately ineffectual.

Sara Menker, founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, is looking to change that. As a former Vice President of Morgan Stanley’s commodities group, it would be easy for her to adapt tried and true practices or language that have been used to describe agriculture and food for decades, but it would be understandable only to experts – the globally informed. Instead, she founded Gro Intelligence, a business that uses big data to enable global food security by developing products that serve as risk management tools. Sara hopes to challenge our views of agriculture, which are all too often siloed.

The problem, according to Sara, starts with the fact that we’ve “become completely okay saying we know nothing

about agriculture. We’ve become so complacent. But we’re all a part of it, whether you’re the person on the field or the one eating the food.”

In order to incite change, we have to become confident in new – and better – ways of doing things. But how do we support this confidence? Sara uses climate change as an example of a concept we’re all too familiar with, yet fail to make progress in. In order to create change, “the first thing we need to do is help people understand it,” she says. “It’s still a largely abstract concept because it’s been sitting in the science or policy domains. But the policy domains don’t act on it, because they don’t understand the science. There needs to be a bridge to close the gap between those two worlds.”

Just how much we’re stuck in the past is very evident to Sara: “Do you have to build roads and railroads the way we did in the 1800s? Absolutely not. But we still do and we still talk about infrastructure projects like they’re being done

by Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J.D. Hugdins. It doesn’t make any sense. You also don’t have world leaders geeking out over every new tech, so they don’t know how to handle it.”

The question is, why are so many people afraid of the new?

It often comes down to a intimidating words, like IoT, selfdriving cars, and smarthome. But if we were to apply more accessible language to these innovations, perhaps the new wouldn’t seem so daunting.

“It’s scary to do something different versus something that’s been done for hundreds and hundreds of years, because it’s just easier.” Sara admits. “We always go for the easy option.” And the easy option also includes letting the technology dictate the label, rather than the other way around. But if we were to actively develop languages in fields like agriculture to be more accessible, there is far more possibility of cross-industry pollination – like Sara democratizing big data at Gro Intelligence.

Sara remains hopeful about our future because, at the end of the day, the power to exact change is in our own hands.

“We are set up for this,” she says. “You can literally think of the future you want and construct it.”

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Dr. Anne Beal Chief Patient Officer at Sanofi, a global leader in healthcare

The Future of Healthcare I think that the biggest challenge we have right now is that we are not customerfocused, we are not patient-centric, and so every solution we come up with makes it easier for the doctor, the payer, the pharmacist – everybody except for the patient. I actually think that if we had no new technology, there would still be lots of room for innovation.

Carolyn Moor Executive Director of Modern Widows Club

The Future of Death We live in a generation – in this country especially – where death is not honored. If we look at other cultures, there’s a respect given to the process, to the sacredness of death. We just got so far away from that, we’re in this reality where people really think that they’re going to live forever.

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Catherine Hill Catherine Hill is the Vice President for Research at the American Association of University Women (AAUW)

The Future of Education No one’s going to have all the skills they need for a full career. Everyone’s going to have something new they need to learn in order to be effective. Businesses need to think about educating their workforce.

Samara Klar

Sally Grimes

Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona and the founder of WomenAlsoKnowStuff.com, a website that promotes women in political science

Chief Global Growth Officer and President, International at Tyson Foods

The Future of Status

The Future of Food

When we think of experts, we tend to think about older, white males. There is an implicit bias.

There are some known conventions in food that our industry has held sacrosanct. You’re either a commodity company, or a branded food company. You are either focused on cost, or you’re focused on growth. You’re either business-to-business, or business-toconsumer. These simple conventions have shaped our industry and defined food companies for decades. I believe these conventions no longer apply.

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Abi Aspen Glencross PhD student studying cellular agriculture in the Tissue Engineering & Biohotonics Division at King’s College, London.

Her research is funded by the US charity New Harvest

The Future of Food We, as cellular agriculturalists, need to do a lot of public engagement. Cultured meat is in the limelight way before it will hit our shelves. This is different to other feared technologies such as GMOs, which were on our shelves for 10 years before anyone caught wind of it. We are starting transparent discussions early so people are painted the full picture.

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MY UTOPIA A MENU FROM THE FUTURE

+++++

STARTER Vegetable patties made from food waste

M A IN Homegrown OpenAg, hydroponic, or garden-grown in-season vegetables Homemade coconut crusted seitan (old school Asianoriginated meat alternative with an awesome texture).

Cultured steak or Impossible Burger

DESSERT Multi-colored, knobbly, “misshapen” carrot cake, made with algae-fuelled egg substitute and muufri milk 3D printed raw souff lé with all the texture, taste, and smell of a conventionally cooked one

BEVERAGE Water made from a manure filtration system, served in f lavor-infused cups

FU T U R IS T IC P O S S IB IL IT Y All served on edible plates, with edible utensils

BY Abi Aspen Glencross

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WORDS FOR THE UNKNOWN

Our Thinking

What if we proactively invented language that made it more culturally acceptable to build technologies that are less artificial and more human like?

We’re reaching a point where the number of industries transforming simultaneously is unprecedented. Just like the horse and buggy is almost unrecognizable today, in the future, sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and financial services are likely to look fundamentally different. To meet the needs of an ever-growing global population, human experiences like those of connection, nutrition, and care are becoming more techno-orientated. In an innovation age where change is less incremental and more fundamental, innovators themselves need to be as concerned with building the language of the future as they are with the thing they’re building.

Now more than ever before, the language of change is critical for the adoption of products, services, and behaviors that are viewed by many as synthetic, artificial, or unknown.

Industries that don’t consider language will have difficulty with mainstream adoption or will be left behind entirely. Take blockchain technology, for example, which has existed since 2009. It has the power to transform the way we think about currency and the monetary systems that underpin the global economy. However, even though that technology has existed for years and industry experts and practitioners are acquainted with its value and benefits, ask your everyday customer and they have little idea what bitcoin is and how to explain it. A gap exists for the majority of consumers and organizations to adopt this technology because they don’t know how to think or talk about it.

Several experts we spoke with demonstrated what happens when language is not shaped proactively.

When the focus of a business is only on outcomes, an innovation gap emerges and organizations must go back and retroactively fix their model or be left behind. For Gillian Einstein, for example, there’s work to be done in creating a new model for women’s health, one that introduces language focused on identifying physical pain rather than shifts in mood. Sara Menker, an expert in agricultural data, also describes how we have the ability to drive change and bring about recognition for issues like climate change, as we have access to data and insights – but without the appropriate explanatory language, we are unable to move forward. By continuing to leverage outdated naming conventions, many industries are stagnating, perpetuating concepts and ideals that are quickly becoming obsolete. If our models for communicating are no longer relevant, there is no room for innovation.

As new experiences are built to replace the old, language and messaging that transforms technology or research from uncanny to acceptable is being applied to help reshape normative behavior patterns and of new technology. As we continue on a path toward becoming “less human” – where we implant biometric devices into our bodies, eat synthetic 3D-printed meat, and travel via driverless cars – the onus is on organizations and industry leaders to work in tandem with consumers to create cultures and vocabularies of change. For organizations, this means creating marketing campaigns and awareness around not only products that exist today, but guides for style and communication that build towards and speculate on a more accessible future vision.

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Speculative Snacking

Hal sat across from her representative, Sara, nervously fiddling with her empty ring finger – old habits died hard, even after three years. She was to present her vlogger storyboard to Sara for GreenGro’s foray into home-grown, individualized herbs and spices. They were modified to work with your specific intestinal issues – which, for Hal, was an intolerance for most spices. It was a shame, as she wanted to keep cooking the traditional Pakistani dishes from her mother’s side, but unfortunately she had inherited her father’s Irish sensitivities. Hal was lucky though; she was chosen to be one of the first influencers to not only test the product, but also to play a part in developing how others would perceive it once – or if – it was brought to market.

Being a speculative brand advocate was stressful.

Sara was hard to please, always concerned about what language was used and how that might impact the results. The goal, of course, was to generate a positive outlook from the audience and to understand what didn’t work. Hal knew that any negative feedback would be useful for fixing mistakes – but Sara was overly concerned about the long-term effects of putting vlogs out there and how a branding mistake could impact future sales if it was traceable.

Sara looked at one particular storyboard and frowned. Hal wondered what she had done wrong this time. If she didn’t have so many followers, she was certain she would have been fired by now. Or maybe they just felt sorry for her, being a single mother and all, and knew she needed the income.

“Synthetically grown?” asked Sara. “Come on Hal, you should really know better. You can’t say the herb is synthetic.”

“But it is, isn’t it? I was just trying to be honest. My followers know me for my honesty – that’s why they like my channel.”

“Of course, but we really need to use a better word for this. We’ve already discovered from other speculative exercises that the word ‘synthetic’ is not on brand for us. We want to create an environment

where people aren’t put off by the thought of our products being manmade.”

Hal thought about it for a minute. She’d had a really positive response to one of her vlogs from a few weeks back, where she presented the idea of keeping and breeding your own flavored crickets for protein – a challenging speculative exercise. Cricket snacks were growing in popularity, but the thought of keeping live ones in your kitchen was a completely new concept. In Hal's vlog, they came bred with a unique flavor (hers was barbecue), so all you had to do was grab a handful and throw them in the frying pan with some olive oil for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the remaining crickets would continue to breed – providing an endless supply of high-protein snacks. She had called it “free-range snacking,” and the associations of these words really got her audience on board. It removed the ick factor.

“How about we say ‘free-grown’ instead of ‘synthetically grown,’ implying it’s grown free of the limitations of the natural world? But we still have the word ‘grow’ in there, which makes it feel more natural,” Hal explained.

Sara looked up, as if picturing the phrase floating in the air, mulling it over. “Yes,” she finally said. “I think that would get a good reaction.”

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We commonly hear the feedback that more people need to be thinking about the future. And while that statement may ring true, we noticed a recurring theme during our experience of creating this feature. There was a universal truism throughout all of our conversations – many of the women said to us: “I have so many ideas about the future, but I’ve never been asked to share them.” The onus is on all of us; we have to ask the people we find most influential about their views on the future.

We have the ability to democratize the future that we see, hear, and read about. Conversations can, and should, include more women as well as other untapped perspectives that exist outside of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, or the field of professional foresight.

We invite you to do the asking. To read the interviews and start drawing your own connections. To reach out to us and tell us who we missed. Or, if you have a platform of your own, to start asking others: How do you imagine the future will be different than today? We need new conversations that inspire and challenge. The future is ripe to be rewritten, re-explored, and reimagined. And not just by men or by women, but by all of us.

To continue the conversation, follow #femalefutures on Twitter and Instagram.

SPECIAL THANKS / Robert Bolton / Laura Dempsey / Julie Do / Ryan Doyle / Fiona Hughes / Stephanie Kaptein / Elinor Keshet / Melanie Levitin / Khairunnisa Mohamedali / Maryam Nabavi / Will Novosedlik / David Oliver / Lindsay Roxon / Valdis Silins / Michelle Switzer / Allen Tsai / John Wither / And all of the women who took the time to speak with us

E V E R YO N E ' S A N A R M Y

T O R O N T O S A N

F R A N C I S C O N E W

Y O R K L O N D O N M E X I C O

C I T Y S Ã O

PAULO

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